An IndyCar paddock with 13 of its 26 drivers leaves a lot to the imagination in 2022 with new teams or advanced roles within its old ones. Not only does positivity reign supreme in the paddock this time of year, so do question marks.
Who will challenge for the championship? Who will win a race? Who will be out of the series by this time next year?
Below, I've listed my most important questions for each of the 26 drivers competing on the full-time IndyCar entries in 2022.
Colton huerta
How will he manage the Formula 1 noise in the background as he tries to navigate his best chance at securing the IndyCar championship? The 21-year-old showed a champion's "best days" in 2021, but he and the number 26 team could not succeed with mechanical issues, pitstop errors and general misunderstandings, which led to eight finishes outside the top-10. ,
Pato o'ward
Does his aggressive driving style match well with the car setup of the Aero McLaren SP to reduce the impact of his glorious weekend? Unlike Herta, O'Ward's top-10 finish a year earlier came largely from a lack of a competitive racecar, and that issue may not exist if he wants to fight for the championship again. .
Joseph Newgarden
Can he win the Indianapolis 500? We all know Newgarden could go down as the best IndyCar driver of his generation, and the 31-year-old could very well challenge for an all-time championship record before hanging up his helmet. Still, entering his 11th 500, only five eventual winners took as long or as long to win their first. The weight is only increasing.
Scott Dixon
Was there an anomaly last year? I know, I feel uncomfortable even typing those words, given that Dixon still won a race and finished fourth in the championship in 2021. But in the 12 seasons of 2007–2018, Dixon once dropped out of the top-3 in points. He has done so twice in the last three years (sandwiching his 2020 title). The chain is only getting deeper. He will only be the 10th oldest series winner, but this will not last forever.
Graham Rahali
Can he win a race? If it doesn't make it to the first six of the year, the 33-year-old will go five years without a win. With seven consecutive top-10 point finishes, Rahal may be IndyCar's most convincingly solid driver who was not legitimately close to the championship after the final checkered flag fell. A title is clearly the goal, but a win (and indeed, multiple) has to come first.
Alex palou
Can he survive a regression? Despite how impressive his season was in 2021, it will be difficult to find an IndyCar champion who came to his title defense with less fanfare than the 24-year-old Spaniard. No one seriously suggests he'll be a flash in the pan, but there's reason to wonder if he can do it over and over again.
2022 IndyCar predictions: Herta's first title, O'Ward's first 500 win
Alexander rossi
Can Rossi fight for the title here? This will be followed by many more questions regarding Rossi in 2022 - will he be with Andretti? Are their performance issues more team or driver related? Where will he drive in 2023? - But if we look at the same race contenders week after week as we got used to a few years ago, it won't matter.
Marcus Ericsson
Can he win again? The way Ericsson won his first two career IndyCar victories in 2021 - after failing to resume from Will Power's lead in Detroit and the crash-happy Nashville race where he went to Hawaii - remain questions Will stay if he can therefore in a relatively normal race at raw speed.
Romain Grosjean
Can he survive the rollercoaster-type seasons that have built his racing career over the past decade. Whether it's a four-year stint with Lotus F1 (22 DNFs and 10 podiums) or last year with Coyne (three podiums and four finishes outside the top-20), consistency has never been his strong suit – but he's never been a strong suit. Not staying with a team like Andretti, either.
Willpower
Are there still any title contenders out there? Power would remain a threat to poles and race wins until he did no more, but was relegated from a top-3 finish in points three years and came off his worst finish as a full-time Penske driver, I wonder whether he has the consistency necessary to compete at the top.
Simon Pagenaud
Can Pagenod Meyer complete the development of Shank Racing? Jack Harvey helped lay the building blocks, but his exit has raised questions about whether the team can continue to challenge for race wins from 2021 onwards given various miscalculations. Pagenode will need to lead the engineering and probably backtrack against strategy calls at times. Sent the wrong way last season.
Scott McLaughlin
Is McLaughlin a Penske-level IndyCar driver? It's probably too early to ask, given how rare Penske has driven rookies, but team president Tim Sindrick told IndyStar he expects the supercar champions to head to the top-5 in Year 2. It's a quantum jump from 14th place with just five top-10s. ,
Jack harvey
Will his gamble pay off? Harvey left the familiar that, of course, didn't always work out, for a large team that has shown consistency but has won just four times in four years. To make it worth it, he has to be a top-10 score contender on a regular basis.
Felix Rosenquist
Who is the 'real' Rosenquist? We have seen a top-6 finisher as a rookie, a race-winner who is full of dissonance and a driver who is often outside the top-15. Should he hope to keep his ride going beyond this season, it will be better the first two.
Conor Daily
Can Daly leap with as much consistency as you want? We've spent the past two years wondering whether he'd be better suited to driving on a team for his full-time calendar, and Daly finally got that wish. It's time for some more weekend viewing.
Rinus VKU
What is the maximum limit of VK? We saw the potential a year ago - Grosjean's surprising drive to run away with the GMR Grand Prix and five other top-10s in the first eight races, but then the 21-year-old Dutch driver kind of hit the roof. Should he ever expect a Penske/Ganasi/Andretti-type proposal, he'll have to show us more.
Christian Lundgaard
Does he have more skill than qualification? Lundgaard's first impression on the IndyCar paddock was speed during practice and qualifying for the second IMS Road Course race, but after starting in fourth place, he fell to 12th. We didn't see him on the track after one Test.
Helio Castroneves
Will he be competitive on road and street courses? During his hiatus from full-time IndyCar competition, Castroneves competed in nine road or road races, with just two finishes in 20th place. There's something to be said for being in the tempo of a full calendar, but in order to fight the points in the top-10, he'll have to resurrect results similar to his Penske days.
Takuma Sato
Does Sato have enough potential to raise a small team to 44? The Japanese driver's final season with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing was his only winless and set low for the top-5 (just one) for that chapter. With fewer resources, could one of IndyCar's bigwigs make a comeback?
David Malukaso
Can he win Rookie of the Year? Other rookies are with the bigger teams or have even more impressive junior career resumes, but Maluka may find himself in a sweet spot of talent and support. He gets lost in the shuffle at times, but there's a big chance he'll surprise many in the paddock in 2022.
Kyle Kirkwood
Can Kirkwood do more than survive? The Indy Lights champ, who won 31 out of 50 races during his Road to Indy career, knows how to drive a racecar, but he can't seem to compare the power of the car with one of the weakest teams on the grid in terms of recent results. adding up. Several series vets have struggled trying to make this team competitive. Making him like this may have been Kirkwood's greatest achievement.
jimmy johnson
Can he make the leap to road and street course performance? I know everyone is looking forward to seeing Johnson's oval performance given his NASCAR background, but the real indicator of whether he's making the move to his IndyCar is whether he's hitting his 17th best at Laguna. Better than the performance could, consistently. Seca and Long Beach in 2021.
Devlin DeFrancesco
Can he prove he is related? Speaking of all offseason, when it comes to Andretti's driver makeup, Grosjean, Rossi and Herta have largely been included, with Defrancesco being an afterthought or left out entirely. It stemmed from a largely ineffective 2021 season at the Indy Lights, where he stood on two podiums and finished 6th in points. Drowning or swimming, his performance in 2022 will be commendable.
Callum Ilot
Can he take a car team? There is plenty of evidence to say that the 2020 F2 runner-up should race in F1 instead of IndyCar this year, but no matter his talent, the odds of reviving the once-shuttered IndyCar program into a series where 26 cars 17 of the five teams are monumental.
Dalton Kelet
Can he become a competitor? Unless he shows otherwise, Kellett will be led to believe that he is in IndyCar solely because of the sponsorship it brings. It's no different than many drivers' stories, but with a finish better than 18th in 24, you have to wonder if he'll ever work his way closer to the top.
Tatiana Calderone
Can she survive Year 1? There's a consensus that the 28-year-old Colombian driver is full of talent, but she's rarely - if ever - been in a range of cars and IndyCar's caliber - and rarely with high-level competitive equipment. Joining an uber-competitive IndyCar series with a team in transition will be the toughest test anyone on the grid faces.