After the first two races of the unified IndyCar Series, it has become quite evident that each team is very proficient at the racing disciplines of the series of their backgrounds.
In the season-opening race at the Homestead-Miami Speedway, the veteran teams from IndyCar excelled on the ovals while the new teams transitioning from the Champ Car Series struggled to adapt to the unfamiliar car on an even more unfamiliar type of circuit.
It was the first oval race for many of the drivers that are new to the IndyCar Series.
But it was nearly as drastic a turnaround in Sunday’s Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, where the drivers with street- and road-course experience from Champ Car were very impressive, including 19-year-old race winner Graham Rahal.
Three of the top five finishers on the streets of St. Pete came from Champ Car, including fourth-place E.J. Viso from Venezuela and Enrique Bernoldi of Mexico. Throw in sixth-place Oriol Servia of Spain, seventh-place Will Power of Australia and ninth-place Justin Wilson of England and six of the top-10 finishers were either new drivers or teams that had come over in IndyCar’s unification.
“The good news about those new drivers, they have a lot of experience,” said second-place finisher Helio Castroneves. “All the giving and taking, it was kind of very smart of everybody trying to take care of each other. For me, that just shows the series and the quality of the drivers is getting better and better.”
Tony Kanaan finished third and joined IndyCar full-time in 2003. At that time, there were no road and street courses on the IndyCar schedule.
“Me and Helio, in the past five years we’ve done 14 road courses and it’s the past five years,” Kanaan said. “They (the drivers from Champ Car) did that many last year. So the same way they felt on the ovals, we felt here.
“It was kind of expected. We knew that the people that we were racing were good. We used to watch them and some of them we raced against. They’ve been sending the message that they are going to come over. I don’t think they needed to prove anything. For me, they didn’t have to. We’ve got to watch out, for sure.
“By the time it comes to the next road course, it’s going to be tough.”
After the second race of the season, Castroneves said it is time to stop calling certain drivers “Champ Car” and others “IRL,” that in a unified series, it’s no longer “us” and “them.”
“There isn’t any more Champ Car and it’s not IRL anymore,” Castroneves said. “Right now, everyone is in one series.
“I didn’t have any doubts, and I always said that — that good teams are going to be good teams and are going to pick up very quickly and this just proves that. We always separated the Champ Car from IRL teams, and now we’re becoming one strong series because this is going to be huge for motorsports.”
Race winner Rahal drives for the most successful team in Champ Car history at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing. He realizes that it may take a while before everyone in IndyCar is viewed as all for one and one for all, but believes it is the best thing to move forward.
“As much as I would like to say that we should all stop saying that, I think it’s going to linger for quite a while,” he said. “I think there are a lot of people that wanted to see how well the Champ Car drivers were going to do this weekend. But we’re past our first road course, so we’re all in the same series. We’re all working together to make this what it used to be, and I think that’s the way we need to approach this.
“We’ve shown that there are a lot of drivers coming over from Champ Car that are very quick, and maybe people underestimated in the past how good of a series that really was. So we’re sitting here today as one series and we’re still just as competitive as we ever were.”