indycar 2023 season preview
At least two of these five cars are going to look very different in 2023.
With Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing’s announcement of Sting Ray Robb piloting it’s No. 51 entry, the 2023 Indycar grid is set with 27 full time entries – the largest in over a decade. The cars and schedule this year will look much the same as last year, but with a significant amount of personnel changes both in and out of the cockpit there’s reason to expect very different results from the 2023 championship.
Starting us off is a team that has seen some of the most wholesale changes of anyone in the paddock – AJ Foyt Enterprises. Last year’s full-time driver pairing of 2021 Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood and affable Canadian Dalton Kellett has been replaced entirely with Indycar rookie Benjamin Pederson and Mr. Excitement himself Santino Ferrucci. Pederson, fresh from a solid title challenge in his 2022 Indy Lights campaign is set to pilot the No. 55, while Ferrucci brings a wealth of experience in taking underperforming machinery to impressive results. It’s clear that Foyt has their sights set much higher for 2023 and has backed that up with several other key signings within the organization, most notably new head engineer Michael Cannon. Cannon, who boasts an impressive resume that includes an extraordinary run at Dale Coyne Racing with Santino Ferrucci in 2019, will be overseeing the race engineering for both cars. If all of the new moving pieces click for Foyt in 2023, it has every ingredient in place for either a standout season or a phenomenal set of highlight reels – watch this space.
In stark contrast, defending 2022 series champions Team Penske are set to continue largely unchanged with driver’s champion Will Power, Scott McLaughlin, and Josef Newgarden. The Penske trio claimed three of the top four championship positions in 2022 but the biggest question for Team Penske in 2023 lies with Scott McLaughlin, now entering his third year of competition in Indycar. To say that expectations for the Australian Supercars ace were high is an understatement but with a sophomore year that saw McLaughlin claim his first series pole and win – in the opening round no less – begs the question, could 2023 see Scotty Mac mount a full-on run for the driver’s championship?
Another team targeting consistency in its lineup is Ed Carpenter Racing, which sees the 2022 lineup of Conor Daly and Rinus VeeKay carry over into 2023. The two will be joined by a third part-time entry piloted at oval events by team owner Ed Carpenter and by Simona de Silvestro at several of the road and street course rounds. That entry, run in association with Paretta Autosport for de Silvestro, has yet to announce which races it will appear at in 2023 but expects to run more than the four rounds they contested in 2022.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan is also betting on year-over-year improvement through consistency with their 2022 challengers Jack Harvey and 2022 Rookie of the Year Christian Lundgaard once again joining Graham Rahal for 2023. The biggest changes for the team have Stefano Sordo joining as new Technical Director, and a reshuffling of car number/sponsor assignments. Lundgaard will take over the No. 45 Hy-Vee entry while Harvey inherits the No. 30, which will see a handful of primary sponsors throughout the season. Following a year that didn’t see any of the three drivers competing at the sharp end of the field as frequently as anyone expected, the team as a whole is looking for some redemption in 2023.
Speaking of redemption, several teams are entering 2023 with something to prove – and right at the top of that list is Andretti Autosport. After a 2022 season that didn’t quite live up to expectations, returning drivers Colton Herta, Romain Grosjean, and Devlin DeFrancesco will be joined by team newcomer Kyle Kirkwood for the full season, with an additional entry for Marco Andretti on tap for the Indianapolis 500. With their senior driver Alexander Rossi departing for Arrow McLaren (more on that later), Andretti is looking to promising F1 veteran Romain Grosjean and young phenom Colton Herta – who may be bound for F1 himself – to lead the team forward and mount a challenge to Penske and Ganassi for Indycar supremacy – if they can stay ahead of their old lead driver that is.
Arrow McLaren is set to have a monster 2023 after making incremental improvements through the previous several seasons. Expanding to three full-time cars for this year, the highly effective duo of Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist is now joined by 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner Alexander Rossi and a newly refocused Craig Hampson serving as race engineer. Though facing less pressure than the drivers at Andretti, everyone at Arrow McLaren will be fighting hard to make a statement, not the least of which Felix Rosenqvist – who faces an uncertain future with the impending arrival of Alex Palou to the team in 2024. How some of the big personalities within the team will get on will be fascinating to watch – but expect big speed out of all three cars as the team continues its fight toward the front of the grid.
Next we move from Arrow McLaren to Chip Ganassi Racing, following the lead of team manager Taylor Kiel. Kiel was instrumental in his former team’s ascension from occasional mid-field contenders to perennial title challengers and it’ll be interesting to see what he can do with the resources of a well-established team like Ganassi. On the driver front the Ganassi organization will still be spearheaded by six-time champ Scott Dixon, 2021 champion Alex Palou, and 2022 Indianapolis 500 winner Marcus Ericsson. The trio will be joined by a fourth full-time car split between Takuma Sato on the ovals and Formula 2 star Marcus Armstrong on the road and street courses. As odd as it seems to have ex-F1 driver Takuma Sato as the team’s oval specialist his driving CV comes with two Indy 500 wins and should prove to be a valuable asset for what is already a traditionally strong team at the Speedway.
Staying on the theme of Indianapolis 500 winners, the most recent member of the 4-time-winners club Helio Castroneves will embark on his second full-time season with Meyer Shank Racing alongside 2016 series champion and 2019 Indy 500 winner Simon Pagenaud. The driver lineup remains unchanged from last year, but with two top-tier talents now solidly settled in MSR will be working hard to improve their fortunes from an underwhelming 2022 season.
As mentioned earlier, Dale Coyne Racing was the last team to confirm their full-time 2023 driver lineup with Indy Lights graduate and undisputed best-named-racing-driver Sting Ray Robb announced in the No. 51 Honda co-entered with Rick Ware Racing. Robb joins the team alongside returning David Malukas, who enters his second season in the No. 18 co-entered by HMD Motorsports on the back of an impressive rookie year. DCR has always been a team capable of shocking the paddock on any given weekend and hopes to make that trend more frequent in 2023 with its roster of young talent.
The newly expanded Juncos Hollinger Racing owns possibly the biggest offseason gamble in hiring Argentinian driver Agustin Canapino for their new No. 78 entry alongside the returning Callum Illott in the No. 77. Aside from a demonstration run in Buenos Aires, Canapino comes to the team with no previous open wheel experience but boasts several touring car championships and even competed with Juncos in 2019 at the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring driving the team’s Cadillac DPi. It’s worth noting that in 2018 Canapino was awarded the Olimpia de Oro from Argentina’s Circle of Sports Journalists – the highest honor awarded to Argentinian athletes and a title that had only been awarded to one racing driver previously, Juan Manuel Fangio.
With several teams poised to make big moves, a crop of hungry and talented rookies, some very capable part time programs, and the largest full-time grid since 2011, this year’s Indycar season looks set to deliver another collection of absolute barn burners right down to the final lap at Laguna Seca. The 2023 NTT Indycar Series kicks off with the return of spring training, held this year for the first time at The Thermal Club in California, on February 2nd and 3rd before heading to St. Petersburg, Florida for the opening round of the championship on March 5th.