By the math, with 108 points available to any driver if they win the last two NTT IndyCar Series races, earn pole, lead a lap, and lead the most laps, there are five drivers who remain in contention heading into Sunday’s second race of the Hy-Vee …
By the math, with 108 points available to any driver if they win the last two NTT IndyCar Series races, earn pole, lead a lap, and lead the most laps, there are five drivers who remain in contention heading into Sunday’s second race of the Hy-Vee Milwaukee doubleheader.
But in reality, the fight for the championship has been reduced to two with leader Alex Palou (514 points) and Will Power (471, 43 points behind). Colton Herta (88 points down), Scott McLaughlin (92 back), and Pato O’Ward (101 points shy) are within that 108-point window, but the real contest boils down to the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda and the No. 12 Penske Chevy.
Power started sixth and finished second in Milwaukee one, and Palou rolled off 13th and came home fifth. For Milwaukee two, Power starts fourth and Palou is 10th.
If Palou can push the lead to 55 points by the end of Sunday, he’s a three-time champion. If Power can take more points off of Palou, a proper battle will await IndyCar fans at the season’s farewell on Sept. 15 at Nashville Superspeedway.
For the Rookie of the Year title, the all-Ganassi duel between Linus Lundqvist and Kyffin Simpson widened with Lundqvist’s sixth-place finish and problems for Simpson that left him 25th. Lundqvist (245 points) and Simpson (157 points) have already settled the matter unless Simpson clears his teammate by 89 points between now and the end of Nashville.
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There was significant movement in the Leaders Circle race, which pays $1 million contracts to the 22 entries who finish inside the top 22 at the end of the entrants’ championship.
The No. 66 Meyer Shank Racing Honda driven by David Malukas arrived in Wisconsin with 164 points and held 19th in the standings. It held 19th after race one with 179 points, but thanks to Conor Daly’s amazing drive to third, the No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevy shot from 23rd to 20th and has 176 points. If Daly can run well in race two ahead of the No. 66, it could be an anxious two weeks for MSR on the approach to Nashville.
Pietro Fittipaldi had a decent first race with the No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Honda, which was 21st coming into the Milwaukee weekend and 21st leaving race one with 168 points. On the bubble in 22nd, it’s the No. 41 AJ Foyt Racing Chevy at 163 points, and on the wrong side of the line in 23rd is the No. 20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevy driven by Christian Rasmussen, which fell from 22nd (160 points).
Last again among Leaders Circle contenders in 24th and 25th is Dale Coyne Racing, with the No. 51 Dale Coyne Racing Honda (144 points) and the No. 18 Honda (121 points).
Six races to go. Millions of dollars on the line. The NTT IndyCar Series’ race-within-a-race, the stampede to earn the final Leaders Circle contracts for 2025, is towards the bottom of the entrants’ championship, happening as it always does at this …
Six races to go. Millions of dollars on the line. The NTT IndyCar Series’ race-within-a-race, the stampede to earn the final Leaders Circle contracts for 2025, is towards the bottom of the entrants’ championship, happening as it always does at this stage of the season.
With Penske Entertainment’s guaranteed prize money distribution system — one that was devised in the mid-2000s by the Hulman George family, the former owners of the series — the top 22 entries in the final standings are eligible to receive the contracts worth approximately $1 million apiece.
The Leaders Circle structure limits eligibility to a maximum of three cars per team, which only affects the five-car Chip Ganassi Racing squad, so outside of CGR’s No. 4 entry for Kyffin Simpson and the No. 11 for Marcus Armstrong, its other three entries, along with the full-time cars at IndyCar’s nine other teams, are in play for those 22 payouts next year.
Entering this weekend’s Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto race, and with an adjustment for the two ineligible CGR cars, the battle to stay inside or break into the top 22 is headed by Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and its No. 30 driven by Pietro Fittipaldi with 124 points. Ed Carpenter Racing’s No. 20 Chevy shared by Christian Rasmussen and Ed Carpenter is next in 20th with 118 points. Meyer Shank Racing’s No. 66 Honda, which has David Malukas in the seat through the final race, is close to the cut line in 21st at 116 points. On the bubble in 22nd is A.J. Foyt Racing’s No. 41 Chevy piloted by Sting Ray Robb, tied at 116 points with MSR’s No. 66.
On the wrong side of the line, the key Leaders Circle pursuers start with the No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevy driven by Agustin Canapino in 23rd at 111 points. In 24th at 100 points it’s Dale Coyne Racing with RWR’s No. 51 Honda, which has cycled through six drivers this season.
And last among the entries that can contend for a contract, Coyne’s No. 18 Honda, which has welcomed four drivers into the cockpit — but lost crucial points by failing to qualify for the Indy 500 — is a distant 25th at 85 points.
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Where the teams and drivers who are safely in the Leaders Circle zone are locked in on where they place in the drivers’ championship, those at the opposite end of the results are laser-focused on their entrants’ placement on Sunday and the remaining races.
“Obviously we are in trouble with the 78,” Juncos told RACER. “We need to score points, but then the mistakes keep happening and bad luck and all that. I think we are fast. I don’t know what’s going on, but we need to make it in For us, it’s important to get that done.”
Short on sponsorship for both of JHR’s entries, Juncos and co-owner Brad Hollinger continue to express their Leaders Circle needs to their team.
“We talk about it many times,” Juncos added. “We need points. Like last weekend, for example, it’s impossible to try to pass and I thought that it would be easy to finish without mistakes. But then Agustin spun on the outside of the pits, so that’s not good. But I feel like if I talk more about the need for points, it’s not gonna help. At this point, we just need a little bit more luck.”
Like Juncos, Larry Foyt is chasing an important piece of his future funding.
“It’s a good chunk of our budgets for sure, being in that Leaders Circle,” the program’s team principal said. “Sting Ray’s been racing really well here lately. That was a real shame about that accident at Iowa. We really thought we were getting out of Iowa with a pretty good team weekend and it was going to be another good finish for him, some good points. But hey, that’s racing, and we’re not giving up. If he can put in a couple really good events here to close out the year, we’ve got a good chance of making that top 22.”
Toby Sowery’s strong showing on his debut has hopes on the rise at Dale Coyne Racing for the chances of its No. 51 making the Leaders Circle cut. Phillip Abbott/Motorsport Images
Dale Coyne has better odds of getting the No. 51 in than the No. 18, and says he chose impressive Indy NXT graduate Toby Sowery to assist in cracking the top 22.
“The Leaders Circle has implications,” he explained. “That’s why we chose Toby for the last road and street races. He did a good job for us at Mid-Ohio, and hopefully that can have some impact. But in front of us, you’ve got the [No.] 78 car, the 41 car and the 66 car, which I expect to continue to do good. But you never know when all of a sudden, strategy or something can pop us up into a top-10 result and change things around.
“If we keep thinking about finishing around the high teens and the low 20s, it doesn’t change much. But if somebody jumps up into the top 10 for us, it changes. I keep an incredibly close eye on it. I’ve got a spreadsheet I use and both cars were safe after St. Pete, and both cars were safe after Barber. And then we had some big blows, and from Laguna on, they both have been below. So we’ll see what happens here. Getting a Leaders Circle is important, but in today’s world, in all honesty, a million dollars doesn’t get over far in the sport.”
For Shank and co-owner Jim Meyer, Malukas and the No. 66 Honda are in good shape at the moment, and getting it into the top 22 was a primary reason with the change they made after opening the season with rookie Tom Blomqvist.
“We played around with our driver lineup, and David’s finished 12th, 13th and 16th, which helped us a lot,” Shank said. “We feel like we’ve got the right guy going forward to make sure that we get that thing in the Leaders Circle. We’ve got some more ovals coming up. He had a little slip-up at Iowa in Race 1 there. And then the car wasn’t great for him in Race 2, but we hung on and got the points we needed.
“We look at this as, ‘What do we need to finish on average?’ to get the car in. We need to be around 16th or 17th, no worse than that, and if we do that and keep that in mind as we go forward, we can get that second Leaders Circle all buttoned up.”
The battle to earn IndyCar’s final Leaders Circle contract played out in dramatic fashion as the last laps of the 2023 were completed in Monterey on Sunday. With guaranteed prize money contracts of $910,000 offered to the top 22 in IndyCar’s …
The battle to earn IndyCar’s final Leaders Circle contract played out in dramatic fashion as the last laps of the 2023 were completed in Monterey on Sunday.
With guaranteed prize money contracts of $910,000 offered to the top 22 in IndyCar’s entrants’ points, a few teams went into the season finale with added pressure to finish the contest on the right side of the cut line.
The big winners started with Juncos Hollinger Racing, with JHR’s Agustin Canapino hauling the No. 78 Chevy to 14th in the race and holding onto 21st in the entrants’ standings in the process. Leaving Portland in 21st, Canapino was in great shape for most of the Monterey race, but contact made with his teammate Callum Ilott, which broke his front wing, saw the No. 78 car drop quickly in the closing laps.
In the end, Canapino — who had Ilott’s race engineer Yves Touron assigned to his car over the final races to help in their Leaders Circle quest — was safe, but barely so.
The Argentinian completed his rookie year with 180 entrants’ points accrued for the No. 78, two points ahead of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s No. 30 RLL Honda which clinched 22nd in the entrants’ championship over Andretti Autosport’s No. 29 Honda driven by Devlin DeFrancesco. By a single point.
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The last Leaders Circle contract was settled by dueling bouts of misfortune, and in the case of Andretti Autosport, rage and frustration. Credit the resilience of the RLL mechanics for repairing Vips’ car after he was taken out in a lap 1 crash, and thanks to their efforts, the rookie returned to finish 24th — 24 laps down at the checkered flag — which was just enough to close the No. 30’s season-long entrants’ account at 178 points.
DeFrancesco’s strong drive was, like most drivers in the race, marred by frequent contact. It was the likely result of an impact received at the back of his No. 29 Honda that turned his transmission into a sentient being and started a downward spiral. Shuddering and shifting at will, DeFrancesco’s pace was greatly compromised, and due to his significantly reduced lap speeds, IndyCar black flagged the No. 29 and ordered him to pit lane for his mechanics to try and find and resolve the problem.
While there, a fresh set of tires were installed in the No. 29 and DeFrancesco was sent back out to continue racing — with the shifting problem unresolved — which was not, according to an IndyCar official who spoke with RACER, what the series had in mind. Ordered to return to the pits, an IndyCar official stood in front of the No. 29 and prevented the situation from happening again.
As one onlooker described the situation, a senior Andretti team leader “went ballistic and aggressively motioned for DeFrancesco to go back out on track” while the official refused to move aside and allow the No. 29 to continue racing. Having left the first time without the series’ approval, the No. 29 was parked, finishing four laps down in 22nd place.
Juri Vips might have been erased from the overall picture on lap 1, but his No. 30 RLL team’s diligence – and bad luck for Andretti’s No. 29 – made it a rewarding afternoon all the same. Gavin Baker/Lumen
In the all-important entrants’ championship, the No. 29 earned 177 points to the 178 captured by RLL’s Hail Mary with Vips in the No. 30 entry, leaving Andretti’s car 23rd and the first car out of the $910,000 pay days.
And to spare any confusion, the final entrants’ standings show the aforementioned drivers in positions that are one spot lower, with the No. 78 in 22nd, the No. 30 in 23rd, and the No. 29 in 24th. Due to a Leaders Circle policy that only allows eligibility for the top three cars from each team, Chip Ganassi Racing’s fourth car — the No. 11 Honda, which placed 14th in the entrants’ championship — is ineligible, which moves all the cars behind it forward by one position.
A special clause was written into the Leaders Circle rules that allows Andretti’s fourth entry to be the only one in the series that is eligible for a contract if places inside the top 22, which makes its one-point loss to RLL’s No. 30 a double blow to the team…
