For as long as people care about motorsport, there will be multiple stories and memories told of the Indianapolis 500s in 2021, 2011, 1987, ’66 and ’65. They didn’t all feature spectacular battles for victory, but those editions of the biggest race in the world were won by drivers who were one-off or part-time entries in the Indy car championship, and the stories behind those successes – by Helio Castroneves, Dan Wheldon, Al Unser, Graham Hill and Jimmy Clark, respectively – were all remarkable.
Seven “extras” who didn’t see in action in IndyCar’s 2022 season-opener at St. Petersburg have already been confirmed for the 106th running of the Indianapolis 500. Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda will enter a fifth car for Tony Kanaan, Andretti Autosport-Honda will run a fifth for Marco Andretti, Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet will again expand to three cars to include Juan Pablo Montoya, Ed Carpenter will race a third car from his eponymous team, JR Hildebrand takes over AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet’s permanent third car, and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing returns to the Speedway with two cars for Sage Karam and Santino Ferrucci.
You could argue that Foyt’s squad has the easiest task in that running Hildebrand doesn’t involve temporary expansion for the 500. The ROKiT-sponsored #11 car is already set to run IndyCar’s road and street course races in the hands of Tatiana Calderon, alongside the team’s full-timers Kyle Kirkwood and Dalton Kellett. With Calderon electing not to tackle ovals (for now), the team asked Hildebrand, who drove for the squad in last year’s 500, to run all five of the speedways on the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series schedule.
It was a very sound choice, for while Hildebrand hasn’t competed full-time in IndyCar since 2017, that year he clocked two podium finishes, both on ovals. Last year in the Foyt car at Indy, he started 22nd in the 33-car field – ahead of three former winners including two Penske drivers – and went on to finish 15th. As JR himself admits, that doesn’t look spectacular on paper, but he felt it was a positive experience, and this year he’ll get some real preparation before entering the hallowed gates of the Speedway by tackling Texas this weekend.
Speaking of his approach to last year’s 500, Hildebrand says: “When you're looking at the teams outside of the obvious like Penske, Ganassi, Andretti, then ECR is always fast at the Speedway in particular, so you're kind of uncertain – How do we extract that level of performance? Where is that going to come from?
“When I showed up there and we got going, we didn't have time to prep as long as maybe those teams do. The chassis that I was running last year was new in the shop in like April! There wasn't an off-season's worth of development to rub on it and get it all nice and cozy… But I felt like I had a really good crew for a one-off scenario that came together sort of late.
“I guess what I'm saying is that what you're looking for as a driver in those kind of situations is to feel like you could roll into raceday with a puncher's chance at it. The way we got through those handful of days, the way the whole engineering group worked together across four cars, it felt like at multiple times throughout the day that we were just operating as one… There were no egos getting in the way on the driver or the engineering side, and we just got down to business, and were able to figure a lot of things out and get the cars to where it's like, ‘Man, if we can manage to work the strategy and get up into the top 10, no doubt I'm going to stay there – and I've probably got a shot at picking guys off once we're there.’
“As soon as Memorial Day weekend was up, I was already working on getting started out for this year because I felt like if we get it rolling in the right direction, this is a group that can achieve at a high level.”
Hildebrand’s optimism can’t be faulted, and the team owned by Indy car icon AJ Foyt has already shown progress this year. Sure, that was on the St. Pete street course, but who’s can say at this stage that they haven’t performed a similar off-season feat on ovals?
Still, it would cause a stir if Hildebrand were to start the race in the first couple of rows, while for one of his former employers, Ed Carpenter, such a performance is almost expected. Carpenter this year has altered the terms of his (self-) employment. He used to take over the #20 car from his road/street course driver for the ‘regular’ ovals, and then at Indy would add a third car to run himself, his part-timer and his full-timer in the #21 car. This year, both Rinus VeeKay and Conor Daly will compete in all the races for ECR, so Ed’s driving schedule in his new #33 entry is up in the air right now, confirmed only for Texas and Indy.
So, like Hildebrand, Carpenter will get to ‘warm up’ for Indy with this weekend’s XPEL 375, even if he probably doesn’t need the acclimation. Over the last nine years, Carpenter has started six Indy 500s from the top four, including three pole positions, and usually with an ECR teammate or two lurking nearby. This team rarely has an off-day at the Speedway, and its pace in qualifying last year made a liar out of anyone wishing to blame Chevrolet for Penske’s lamentable grid positions.
Come race day, Daly and VeeKay led 72 of the 200 laps for ECR, and while Ed himself suffered a pitstop issue, he recovered to finish fifth – just 1.24sec behind winner Castroneves. Oh, and Carpenter finished runner-up in the 500 as recently as 2018. Let no one doubt he’s a part-timer capable of finding Victory Lane.
Last year was Marco Andretti’s first Indy as a one-off, following his decision the previous winter to step down from racing full-time for Andretti Autosport, and while it appeared a disappointing effort, it was quite inconclusive. Andretti’s #98 car had a flaw in its floor and this aerodynamic problem went undetected until after qualifying, leaving him mired in 25th on the grid. Had he not lost so much practice time chasing this fundamental faux-pas, Andretti or his car might have been stronger on raceday; instead he came home 19th. Was this any more frustrating than the year before, when he set pole position but failed to lead even a lap and came home a woebegone 13th? Probably not.
No question, it appears ever harder to gauge Marco’s chances of winning the 500. But still, the idea of an Andretti Autosport-Honda winning the 500 (for a sixth time) in the hands of a 17-year veteran with four top-three Indy finishes is hardly inconceivable.
His former teammate Tony Kanaan is another who suffered some shocking luck at the Speedway, but unlike Andretti, on one glorious day in 2013 it all came right for the Brazilian fan-favorites as perennial Indy nearly-man became a winner with KV Racing. He was cheered to the echo.
Last year, TK ran an oval-only schedule with Chip Ganassi Racing, taking over the #48 from NASCAR legend but IndyCar rookie Jimmie Johnson. With JJ committing to the full season, Ganassi is temporarily adding a fifth car to fulfill its contract with Kanaan, but there’s nothing to suggest this will be anything other than a top-flight entry. Kanaan qualified fifth at the Speedway last year, and Ganassi will doubtless populate his crew with top-rank people from its recently expanded IMSA squad. If this is TK’s final Indy 500 appearance – or his last in a truly front-running ride, anyway – one can dream he’ll magically find an extra 1mph in qualifying, or perhaps get his elbows out a tad more in a late-race restart. But in fact we’re talking about a guy who already gives his all on track, so the combination of TK and a Ganassi-Honda can be a potent force at IMS.
The same might be said of Juan Pablo Montoya and Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet. JPM is one of the greatest talents it has been my privilege to watch (across nine series so far!) over the past 30 years, and AMSP has learned well from previous experiences – some bitter – how to run an extra entry for the Indy 500.
“The third-car piece can be difficult,” admits team president Taylor Kiel. “We've made it difficult on ourselves in the past by trying to just do it for Indy. What we've done the last few years is we've brought in these people full-time. They're full-time members of our team. The third car group did practice with the first and second groups, they're working in car builds, assemblies, fully integrated into the team so we can turn that switch on and off as we need to…
“Luckily we have the resource and ability to do that. In the past when we didn't, it was distracting: we were trying to pull together 10, 12, 15 contractors that we hadn't worked with, and expecting them to do high-level pit stops. If you go to Indianapolis to win, you have to do it at a certain level. We've ticked that box, so to speak.”
And Kiel has no doubts that having Montoya in that third car – for GP Indy as well as the 500 – is a huge benefit.
“What Juan brings is very simple: he brings a world championship caliber attitude,” he said. “He's obviously won Indy twice. That's meaningful. He knows how to get around. He knows how to seal the deal when the time comes. He brings a ton of experience.
“For us, there's a level of continuity now with Juan where we've got a seat, know what he likes, and can pick up from where we left off last year. Having the ability to get on with it rather than spending the first day or two familiarizing with each other is important. For me it was a net positive to our program last year and I see it as being more positive for this year for those reasons.”
And having Montoya supplementing the feedback notes of O’Ward and Rosenqvist boosts the team as a whole despite a different driving style.
“Whether it meshes [with theirs] or doesn't, it gives us another opportunity for us to look at something,” says Kiel. “For instance, something that pops out to me is where [Montoya] places the car in the corners is a lot different than Pato and Felix. They get around at similar speeds. Is one way better than the other? I don't know. It gives us an opportunity to look at it and evaluate different schools of thought.
“I think where we can find ourselves in trouble, is if we're all thinking and saying the same things. It's nice to have a different opinion occasionally and have some challenging conversations, but not in a way that's negative. It's like, ‘Well, have you thought about doing it this way?’ I think that makes us a better organization.”
Last year, Montoya looked particularly in tune with his car on race day, climbing from 24th to finish ninth, pulling off good passes and also appearing to have a car that behaved well on a variety of lines – not unlike that of former teammate Simon Pagenaud who rose from 26th to third. Should the #6 team find enough four-lap pace whereby JPM can qualify in the top dozen, you’d be foolish to bet against him making his presence felt at the sharp end on Memorial Day Weekend.
Interestingly, there was one driver who gained more places than both Montoya and Pagenaud in last year’s race, and that was Sage Karam who drove his Dreyer & Reinbold Racing-Chevy up from 31st to finish a highly impressive seventh. Among the part-timers confirmed as entries for the 500 this year, Karam and Santino Ferrucci are the only ones driving for a team that is also Indy-only. But owner Dennis Reinbold has no qualms about going up against full-timers and doesn’t feel he’s at a disadvantage at all.
“I feel we’re very prepared,” he tells Motorsport.com. “We’ve identified what we need to work on, and qualifying is at the top of that list. We ended up seventh after qualifying on the back row last year, so our racecar was really good, it was a good-handling car, and Sage did a great job driving up to the front. This year we’re confident that both Sage and Santino will be really solid in the race, so the next step is to make sure they start further forward to give them a chance to run up front and get in that mix – and get in that mix sooner.
“This week we did some windtunnel time and we’re working on other things, too. We’re bringing in some additional resources on the engineering side, and we’re honestly working on this race on a full-time basis, so we don’t feel like we’re missing out at all, compared with the other teams. We’re coming in probably even better prepared than we have been in the past – and I felt we were well prepared then! It’s just that we had a couple of holes to fill in, and we’ve been addressing those holes.”
Reinbold’s positive outlook extends to his team personnel line-up, despite the current swelling grid numbers in IndyCar and IMSA making it increasingly difficult for teams in either series to find top-quality engineers, mechanics and/or pit crews. DRR runs multiple entries in rallycross competition, so it has some steadfast stars already on the staff-list, and also on-call.
“We’re a full-time team, so we don’t really have to add a lot of part-time people to ramp up to two cars,” he says. “Last year we ran only one IndyCar, but we’ve run two cars several years before that, so a lot of the same people we’ve had in previous efforts have come back, and they’re really good people who we want to keep returning to us.”
Reinbold’s faith in Karam – who won the NEXT class of Nitro Rallycross last year – is unshakeable, having first run him as a 19-year-old rookie in the 2014 Indy 500, guiding him to ninth place. This year, as stated, Reinbold is able to return to a two-car line-up, and it’s hard to criticize his choice of Ferrucci as Karam’s teammate: in his first three starts at the 500, Ferrucci finished seventh, fourth and sixth, despite never starting higher than 19th, and despite becoming only a part-timer in IndyCar in 2021.
Asked if it will be a big benefit to the team for Karam to be able to once more pool information with a teammate, Reinbold replied, “It can be, depending on how well the team is structured to take advantage of that. Multi-car teams that are full-time may lean on one driver and his group to push development on behalf of all of them. We’re not really in that position so we count on both but our structure is better than in the past to run two cars. My team manager Chase Selman has done a really good job of getting ahead of the game, because we’ve known for some time we’ll be up to two cars.
“So, yes, I’m very confident in the team, the crew and our drivers for Indy.”
The late, great Robin Miller once told me that Reinbold was one of only two IndyCar team owners who had never lied to him in his several decades of covering the sport, and that may be reason enough to take DRR’s proprietor at his word and share his confidence.
And if it’s hard to imagine that part-timers won’t always be at something of a disadvantage in the Indy 500, it is also true that small deficiencies can be overcome by a team’s collective talent, experience and ability to surmount obstacles and cope with variables.
A few years ago, I asked Rick Mears about Castroneves’ prospects of eventually joining him, A.J. Foyt and Al Unser in the four-time Indy winners’ club, despite the fact that the Brazilian vet was at that point running just a couple of IndyCar races per year. Mears retired from driving after his injury-blighted 1992 season and then stayed retired, resisting the temptation to return to Indy for ‘one-off’ drives, as he felt he wouldn’t be as sharp as he once was. (Given that Penske drivers won the 500 in both ’93 and ’94, he thus missed the chance of becoming Indy’s only six-time victor!) But a quarter-century later, he wasn’t about to hang the same question-mark over his former protégé.
"Helio can win the Indy 500 even as a part-timer, because for him, the fire's still lit and he's still current,” said Mears. “For me, in my final year, that desire was starting to go out. If I'd had the desire to do a one-off at Indy in 1993, that would have been OK because I was still current on the cars, I was still relevant. But another year after that? No. I'd have been away for another full year and the longer the layoff, the more you lose… Returning just for Indy wasn't really an issue or even a consideration because the fire wasn't there.”
For all the part-time drivers confirmed so far for the 106th Indianapolis 500, that fire is most definitely still lit, and several are in circumstances so strong that, come Sunday, May 29, it would be no shock to see them drink the milk, put on the Borg-Warner wreath, and pass into legend. That part-time gig worked out fine for Helio, just as Rick suggested it might.
