IndyCar
2022 NTT INDYCAR SERIES Season Preview
ST. PETERSBURG, FL (Pittsburgh Racing Now) – The 2022 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season kicks off with this weekend’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. This is the 18th year of the event, whose 1.8-mile, 14-turn, temporary street course uses part of the Albert Whitted Airport and city streets. The three-day event generates $48-million dollars annually in economic impact for the St. Petersburg area a.
Colton Herta is the defending race winner. Previous winners entered in the event include Josef Newgarden (2019 & 2020), Will Power (2014 & 2010), Helio Castroneves (2006, 2007 & 2012) and Graham Rahal (2008).
Chip Ganassi Racing enters 2022 as the team to beat. CGR is going for their third straight season Championship after Alex Palou won his first in 2021 and teammate Scott Dixon won his sixth in 2020.
CGR is no stranger to winning multiple titles in a row. Jimmy Vasser, Alex Zanardi and Juan Pablo Montoya reeled off four straight titles from 1996 thru 1999. Dixon and Dario Franchitti also took home four straight Championships from 2008 thru 2011. Zanardi and Franchitti are the only CGR drivers to capture back-to-back titles and Palou is looking to join that elite company.
Dixon finished fourth in last year’s title battle with teammate Marcus Ericsson finishing in sixth place. Dixon took home a race win and Ericsson picked up his first career win and added another victory in the inaugural Music City Grand Prix. Palou visited three victory lane three times, giving CGR 6-wins in 17-events and three drivers in the Top 6 in the Championship.
“It’s been a good progression for me in my three years in INDYCAR, just getting better and better,” said Ericsson. “Last year was really a breakthrough year for me with a couple of wins and another podium and a very solid season.”
The fourth member of the CGR squad, Jimmie Johnson, is running the full-season in 2022 after only running the road and street course races in 2021. Johnson’s steep learning curve was marked by gradual progress as he began to get more familiar with the race car and the racetracks. Johnson is looking forward to returning to race tracks with some familiarity.
“I feel like last year, Detroit there was Race 1 and 2 and a huge improvement from day-to-day so experiencing that first-hand I know that this year is going to be so much better,” said Johnson, who has a documentary film crew following him around this weekend.
Herta and Andretti Autosport could be primed to challenge CGR for the top spot. Herta tied Palou for the series-high in wins with three but finished 5th in the Championship standing.
Alexander Rossi returns to the No. 27 Honda for Andretti and looks to regain Championship contender form after going winless the past two seasons.
Andretti has added Romain Grosjean to the team. Grosjean replaces Ryan Hunter-Reay in the DHL Honda. Grosjean, like Johnson, will also benefit by going back to racetracks for the second time.
The Team Penske trio of Josef Newgarden, Will Power and Scott McLaughlin return for 2022. Newgarden finished 2nd in the 2021 Championship standings and will be looking to add a third title to his considerable resume. The only thing missing from JoNew’s resume is an Indy 500 win.
Power’s 2021 season could be characterized as blindingly fast at times coupled with bad luck (Detroit Race 1) and some not-so-stellar driving.
McLaughlin, like Grosjean and Johnson, visited many of the race tracks for the first time in 2021 and looks to take the next step in his development. McLaughlin showed flashes of what could be with a best showing of second in the first Texas race.
Another team with significant changes on and off track is Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. RLL is in the finishing stages of building a new team headquarters in Indiana. RLL has added Jack Harvey and Christian Lundgaard to the driver roster to be teammates with Graham Rahal.
Meyer Shank Racing is expanding to two full-time cars with 4-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves being joined by Simon Pagenaud in the two-car squad. Castroneves ran a limited schedule in 2021 and Pagenaud finished 8th in the Championship in his last season with Penske.
Arrow McLaren SP is seeking some consistency. Pato O’Ward is unquestionably one of the series rising stars who has been blinding fast…..at times. O’Ward’s teammate Felix Rosenqvist had a dismal 2021, finishing 21st in the title fight. Rosenqvist struggled finding a set-up that fit his driving style but with Craig Hampson atop his pit box in 2022, expect to see improvement.
“I think something that is pretty big on my radar is consistency,” O’Ward told Pittsburgh Racing Now. “I feel like our good races were great. Our bad races were horrendous. That’s what we need to bring up and that will help us overall in the Championship.”
“I’m really psyched,” said Rosenqvist. “I just want to get out there. I feel like we worked really hard in the off-season.”
Dale Coyne Racing returns with new drivers and a new partner. Takuma Sato moves over to DCR with Rick Ware Racing after spending the last few seasons with RLL Racing. Rookie David Malukas moves up from IndyLights and joins DCR in partnership with HVM.
Conor Daly is full-time in 2022 driving for Ed Carpenter Racing where he will team once again with Rinus VeeKay and Carpenter, who will run the Indianapolis 500.
“It’s crazy to think the last time I was full-time with one team was 2017, life changes a lot in five years,” reflected Daly, who brings new partners Bitnile and Earnity into the series in 2022. “I think there is a lot of exciting things going on with Earnity, a new app that you can download, it’s crypto-trading that you have access to and you can follow me on it.”
A.J. Foyt Racing also has a couple of new drivers who will join returning veteran Dalton Kellett, who will be back in the No. 4 K-Line Insulators USA Chevy. 2021 IndyLights Champion Kyle Kirkwood will be behind the wheel of the No. 14 ROKiT Chevy and Tatiana Calderon will be behind the wheel of the No. 11 ROKiT Chevy on the road and street courses.
Juncos Hollinger Racing is back for 2022 and will campaign Callum Ilott in the No. 77 Chevrolet.
Watching the NTT INDYCAR SERIES will be easier for some folks this year as a majority of races will be on NBC Network TV with a couple on USA Network as the NBC Sports Network (NBC-SN) has been shuttered.
All races will be broadcast by the INDYCAR Radio Network on SiriusXM Satellite Radio Channel 160.
THERMAL, CA (March 23, 2025) – Alex Palou is off to a great start to defending his 2023 and 2024 Championships by winning Sunday’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES Thermal Club Grand Prix to start off 2025 with back-to-back victories.
“it’s amazing,” said Palou. “We love this feeling obviously. I think everybody does. We never take anything for granted, at least they don’t, anybody in the team. They just keep on working and giving me better cars and all the tools that I need to try and win and fight for the races.”
Palou, who became the first driver to win back-to-back races to start the season since teammate Scott Dixon in 2020, gave all the credit to his No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda crew.
“It’s been incredible, an incredible weekend with lots of speed and perfect execution on pit stop, strategy,” said Palou. “It was especially hard for us when we were at the beginning of the race at a disadvantage on the tires compared to the 5 and the 7, when they started using their new alternates very early on. You could see they’re going away. You’re like, Man, I know I still need to go slow and keep my rear tires on, although you see they’re pushing a little bit more than you.”
Palou survived the first stint in third place as the tire strategy continued to play out on the remaining stops until he passed pole-sitter Patricio O’Ward with 10-laps to go and pulled away for his 13th career victory.
O’Ward led an Arrow McLaren front row lockout starting on the pole position and led a race-high 51-laps but the No. 5 Chevy didn’t have enough to hold off Palou when it mattered most, after the last pit stop of the race.
“Obviously we were the car that had everything to lose because we were starting on pole,” said O’Ward. “I think we led like 50-something laps, 51 laps. It kind of sucks to lose it there in the end.”
O’Ward and his team started the race on new Firestone alternate tires whereas Palou started on used alternates keeping the sticker reds for his last run.
“We ran a red, black, black, black race,” explained O’Ward. “I think it should have been a red, red, black, black or any sort of combination with two reds and two blacks. I think we missed it on the 5 car. We can only see why we chose that, try not to make that mistake again.”
Christian Lundgaard, who started second, finished third in the No. 7 Chevy to give the McLaren team two car on the podium.
“I think the car that I had yesterday was potentially a little more preferred for me than today,” said Lundgaard, who scored the fourth podium finish of his career. “I think we made some changes going into warm-up that felt nice in warm-up, but it was 40 degrees cooler. We carried those into the race. To me that didn’t really seem to be the preferred.”
Andretti Global’s Colton Herta finished fourth in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda followed by Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist in fifth in the No. 60 SiriusXM Honda, giving Honda three cars in the Top 5.
Will Power was the biggest mover of the day, picking up 15-positions to finish sixth in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet.
Palou holds a 39-point lead over O’Ward and a 41-point lead over Scott Dixon in the Championship standing heading into the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 13, 2025.
THERMAL, CA (March 21, 2025) – Two-time defending and three-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES Champion Alex Palou is atop the speed charts after the first practice session at The Thermal Club.
Palou’s fast lap of 1-minute, 40.5486-seconds in the No. 10 DHL Chip Ganassi Racing Honda around the 17-turn, 3.067-mile natural terrain road course was 0.0901-seconds quicker than Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood’s lap in the No. 27 Chili’s Honda.
“A really good start to the weekend for the No. 10 DHL Honda team,” said Palou. “We didn’t get many laps because of some red flags, but the car rolled off really well considering it was very different to last year with different tires and the hybrid unit, and we didn’t test here this year. I’m really happy.”
Kirkwood wasn’t the only Andretti Global car to shine as 2022 Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge winner Marcus Ericsson was third at 1:40.7370 in the No. 28 Bryant Honda, followed by Southern California native Colton Herta at 1:40.8439 in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda.
“Good start for all the Andretti cars,” said Herta. “All in the top 5. Just happy with that. This is a place where we tested, so really wanted to start off on the right foot. If we’re not quick right away after a place that you’ve tested at, it’s a little disappointing. You scratch your heads a little bit. So to start off that way is a little bit expected because we tested here, but it feels good.”
Not feeling good is the PREMA Racing team after a lengthy red flag for rookie Robert Shwartzman, who was forced to stop on track just past Turn 6 when a fire erupted in the rear of his No. 83 Chevrolet. Shwartzman quickly climbed from the car and was not hurt but the car was destroyed.
Saturday’s schedule features another practice at 1 p.m. ET, followed by NTT P1 Award qualifying at 5:05 p.m. ET (both on FS1, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network). The 65-lap race starts at 3 p.m. ET Sunday (FOX, FOX Sports app, INDYCAR Radio Network).
IndyCar
Scott Dixon grabs 2nd place finish at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg despite no radio
ST. PETERSBURG, FL (March 2, 2025) – Scott Dixon has some pretty incredible accomplishments in his 25-year INDYCAR career but finishing second in the season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg despite losing radio communication with his team may be the most incredible.
“I’m pretty pissed off,” fumed Dixon, a six-time series Champion. “”It’s the first time I’ve ever done a whole race without a radio, so that was interesting. We had a good race going and we didn’t get it done. So it doesn’t feel good, that’s for sure.”
Imagine racing in the most competitive form or motorsports, in a concrete canyon using only your mirrors and the data on your dash.
“Kind of worked on the warm-up laps and kind of for the first 10 and that was about it,” explained Dixon about the radio issue.
The No. 9 PNC Bank Honda timing stand on pit road could only hear Dixon sometimes according to team owner Chip Ganassi.
“It was intermittent,” explained Ganassi. “Sometimes you got it, sometimes you didn’t.”
Not knowing key information to make decisions in the cockpit isn’t something that any modern day race driver wants to deal with.
“It’s nice in the race, right, just to understand who’s doing what, what strategy everybody is on,” explained Dixon. “I think when I caught Rossi and maybe Lundgaard, I kept trying to ask, how many laps have they got to go before we can get some clean air and kind of push because it’s very tough to just get a pass going here.”
Street circuits are notoriously tough to pass on so strategy often comes into play as teams try to ‘undercut’ (pit early) or ‘overcut’ (stay out long) to gain track position.
Dixon was leading the race, didn’t know what strategy his competitors were on; didn’t know who was up ahead unless he could see them and in the end didn’t have communication from his pit stand to come in a lap earlier for his final pit stop because of traffic.
“Ultimately cost us the race, I think, with not coming in when I should have,” said Dixon. “I caught about five or six cars on my in-lap. I think I lost about two or three seconds just on my in-lap. They (10 car) did the right thing; they could see the traffic coming. I had no communication, so didn’t know.”
Team owner Chip Ganassi said Dixon would’ve been on the top step of the podium if not for the issue.
“Well, if everything was 100 percent, he would have won — it was simple,” said Ganassi. “He would have won the race. The race was over. It was one stop to go, and we pitted a lap later than we wanted him to. That was the race. That was the difference between he and Palou.”
“Glad we got some good points and a nice one-two for the team,” said Dixon.
Palou leads the Championship by 10-points over Dixon as the NTT INDYCAR SERIES takes a few weeks off before the next race at The Thermal Club on March 23, 2025.
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Scott Dixon grabs 2nd place finish at the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg despite no radio
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