A.J. Foyt Racing
Foyt Racing has its work cut out. Charlie Kimball joins the team as the full-time driver of the No. 4 while the No. 14 car will rotate between Tony Kanaan, Sebastien Bourdais, and Dalton Kellett. Kellett, who will be competing in his first IndyCar season, will also drive in the team’s third entry for the Indianapolis 500.
The 2019 campaign was challenging, saying the least. Kanaan finished 15th in the championship while Matheus Leist was 19th. To make matters worse, it also lost full-time sponsorship from ABC Supply Co. The goal for Super Tex’s team should be top-15 results. It’s a modest goal, but it will help it climb out of the basement.
Andretti Autosport
Andretti’s mammoth lineup for the 2020 season has high expectations.
Alexander Rossi, who has been the face of IndyCar’s Honda program for the last two years, will be looking to clinch his first title. Expect him to be a threat at the Indy 500 again, too. Simon Pagenaud was the dominant car at last year’s running, but Rossi put up a fight where they swapped the lead in the closing laps before ultimately finishing second.
Colton Herta will officially join the fold as well. He was a driver for the team’s Indy Lights operation before joining Harding Steinbrenner Racing for his rookie season last year, but now he and HSR have fully merged with Andretti.
Ryan Hunter-Reay, Zach Veach, and Marco Andretti will all return. Veach is in the final year of his three-year contract and needs to bounce back after a sophomore slump. Andretti looks to have a rebound season too after finishing 16th in the standings in his first campaign as the co-owner of Andretti Herta Autosport w/ Marco Andretti and Curb Agajanian.
Arrow McLaren SP
AMSP might be the hardest team to predict expectations for this season. It will field two full-time cars with highly-touted prospects Patricio O’Ward and Oliver Askew, who have won the two most recent Indy Lights championships in dominating fashion.
The Schmidt Peterson organization has switched from Honda to Chevrolet as well. It has struggled in recent years with consistency. Most notably in 2018, it failed to qualify for the Indy 500 with James Hinchliffe. Once McLaren joined the operation, it played a factor in Hinchcliffe’s fate. They didn’t feel he was the right driver for the long-term growth of the squad.
Two-time Formula One world champion Fernando Alonso will race the team’s third entry for the Indy 500. Alonso was initially believed to be signing with Andretti Autosport, but the deal fell through when Honda vetoed it.
Carlin
Max Chilton will return to the No. 59 for all of the road and street course events as well as the Indy 500 while Conor Daly will drive the four remaining oval races. Chilton stepped away from the ovals due to the high-risk nature involved in it.
There appear to be several drivers poised to wheel the team’s second full-time car. Felipe Nasr and Sergio Sette Camara tested for Carlin at Circuit of the Americas, and Nasr will pilot the No. 31 at St. Petersburg. Like Foyt, this team is looking to rise from the bottom end of the competition.
Chip Ganassi Racing
Scott Dixon and Felix Rosenqvist will return, and Marcus Ericsson comes aboard to drive the No. 8 full-time. Dixon, as we know, is a generational talent, but what about his two Swedish teammates?
Rosenqvist won Rookie of the Year honors in 2019 and will look to become an IndyCar winner for the first time. Ericsson, who completed his rookie campaign with Schmidt Peterson, will now have the best opportunity of his open-wheel career with a championship-caliber organization. As an F1 driver, he was never in a car that was capable of wins or podiums. He earned one podium result last year at Belle Isle, but now is the time to show the racing world that he isn’t just another driver with lots of funding behind him.
Dale Coyne Racing
Defending Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, Santino Ferrucci returns to Coyne for his sophomore year, but he’ll be in a unique role. In 2019, he was under the wing of four-time champion Sebastien Bourdais, but Bourdais has been replaced by newcomer Alex Palou. Now Ferrucci, 21, will be in more of a mentorship position with Palou, 22, who raced in the Japanese Super Formula series last year.
DragonSpeed
The American sports car team will return on a part-time basis in 2020, and Ben Hanley will drive the No. 81 at the season opener in St. Petersburg. It will run five more events, including the Indy 500, but has not announced any other drivers. It hopes to be a full-time team by 2021.
Dreyer & Reinbold Racing
Sage Karam will return to the No. 24 on a part-time schedule. He is scheduled to race at St. Pete, both Indy rounds, and Toronto. Although nothing has been confirmed, J.R. Hildrebrand is in the running to compete with the team at the 500 again as he did last year.
Ed Carpenter Racing
ECR will field rookie Rinus VeeKay in the No. 21 full-time while Carpenter himself will return to the ovals in the No. 20. Conor Daly will pilot the No. 20 on the road and street courses and will run the full season between ECR and Carlin.
VeeKay, 19, finished second in the 2019 Indy Lights championship. He won six of the 18 races with Juncos Racing, including a sweep at Laguna Seca. He could be a dark horse for the Rookie of the Year battle in 2020, even with Askew as the favorite right now. The Dutchman is known for being lightning quick — but he will face a learning curve this season as he will compete in larger fields with more sophisticated cars. A goal for him is to run as many laps as possible.
Meyer Shank Racing
Meyer Shank will run the full season with Jack Harvey behind the wheel in a newly-formed alliance with Andretti Autosport. The team has been seeking the right partner for several years that would allow this primarily sports-car related program to enter each round of an IndyCar season.
With Schmidt-Peterson aligning with McLaren and Chevrolet, MSR needed to find a new Honda-powered team. Harvey drove the No. 60 in 10 of 17 races last season, and notched a podium at the Indy Grand Prix. This team could be in the mix for a top-10 in the championship.
Juncos Racing
All has been quiet on this front. The team shocked the world when Kyle Kaiser bumped Alonso from the Indy 500 lineup in 2019, but not much has happened since. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Juncos attempt the 500 again, but it will need sponsorship to do so.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
RLL will return with Graham Rahal and Takuma Sato again. This is a crucial year for Rahal, whose career has been trending downward for the last half a decade. Since 2015, he’s finished fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, and 10th in the championship. Sato has proven that he can win in RLL equipment, so it is up Rahal to demonstrate that he can compete at his teammate’s level, too.
Spencer Pigot will drive for RLL in the two rounds at Indy. He’s coming off a season where he was 14th in the title with ECR.
Team Penske
Yeah, don’t know about this team. Probably going to struggle a lot.
It goes without saying, that’s a joke.
Penske will be as strong as ever. Josef Newgarden just won his second title while Pagenaud and Power are the two most recent 500 champions. Power had a bit of an off-year in 2019, but he got hot right as the season wound down with wins in two of the last four races.
This trio won nine races altogether and finished first, second and fifth in the standings. Yes, Pagenaud and Power are getting a tad older, but they still seem to be at the top of their game.
Three-time Indy 500 winner Hélio Castroneves will return to the event while Australia Supercars champion Scott McLaughlin is set to make his series debut on the Indy road course.
There’s been a curiosity to know if this is a dress rehearsal for McLaughlin to race full-time in the series after 2020. It could be. If Penske wants to add a fourth entry in 2021, I’m sure it can happen. But one must also think that whichever driver — whether it’s Power, Pagenaud or Newgarden — finishes lowest in the 2020 title rankings could be on a hot seat for next year.
Photo: Chris Graythen / Getty Images
