The top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2013

If you go by the numbers, the 2013 IndyCar championship was decided partly by Scott Dixon's phenomenal late-season charge, and partly by Helio Castroneves's Houston disaster.

It was a season in which the tea leaves rarely revealed what was coming. Ten different winners, Takuma Sato leading the points after Brazil yet ending up 17th, Castroneves battering everyone with a blend of pace and freakish consistency, only to have his gearbox crack in Houston.

IndyCar 2013. You couldn't make it up.

1. SCOTT DIXON

Team: Chip Ganassi Racing
Championship position: 1st (577 points)
Wins: 4
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 0

The first race of the season was still a day away, but Chip Ganassi already had a bad feeling. On this occasion, his frustration was targeted at engine supplier Honda.

"I don't know if they want to win badly enough," he said. "It's like they want to sit around and hold hands and sing 'Kumbaya'."

But a perceived engine disadvantage was just the start. Ganassi's street-course set-ups were off-song during the opening races; the damper programme wasn't delivering the expected results, and the Firestone street-course tyres were proving tricky to figure out.

It wasn't all bad. Dixon earned a podium at Barber, and was fourth in both races at Detroit. And while much is made of the Kiwi's late-season resurgence, his championship owed just as much to his knack of being able to score points when things weren't going right.

All that said, when the fightback began, it was awesome. A hat-trick of wins from Pocono and the Toronto double-header, a fifth at Milwaukee - then, seemingly, disaster. At Sonoma he was fighting Will Power for the lead until being penalised for inadvertently hitting some Penske crew members in pitlane; in Baltimore he was mashed against the wall by Power on a restart.

That should have almost ruled him out again, but while Castroneves was struggling with problems of his own at Houston, Dixon capitalised with another win and a second place, setting him up to finish the job with a fifth at Fontana.

It was, in short, a champion's season. And as admirable as Castroneves' year was, Dixon claims the top spot in this year's top 10 by virtue of the fact that he never had the luxury of being able to choose whether to charge, or to play it safe. He had to push; had to take risks every weekend.

Few drivers could have pulled it off to the extent that he did this year.

2. HELIO CASTRONEVES

Team: Penske
Championship position: 2nd (550 points)
Wins: 1
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 1

The Brazilian committed to taking a conservative approach to his season right from the start; a strategy that benefited greatly from the early-season struggles that prevented some of his traditional rivals from posing a threat during the opening races.

Settling for a safe fifth every weekend might not be the most exciting way to go about fighting for a championship, but achieving the consistency required to make it work is extraordinarily difficult, and it's impossible not to admire how effectively Castroneves was able to pull it off.

In a season peppered with so many chaotic races, the fact that he was able to make it as far as Houston before his 100 per cent lap completion streak ended seems unbelievable.

When disaster struck it struck hard, and the scale of calamity that surrounded Castroneves in Houston was so extreme as to almost inspire awe. In just 24 hours, a massive points advantage was reduced to a smoking wreck by a couple of gearbox failures.

The consequent deficit to Scott Dixon proved insurmountable at Fontana two weeks later, but the Brazilian's performance over the season was matched only by his dignity when he was forced to concede the title.

Any lingering questions over whether Castroneves could escape the 'Indy specialist' tag and carry a sustained championship fight have been answered.

3. SIMON PAGENAUD

Team: Schmidt Peterson Motorsports
Championship position: 3rd (508 points)
Wins: 2
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1

Simon Pagenaud might not necessarily be annoyed that so many - AUTOSPORT included - were surprised that he was able to hang on for third in the championship, but he might be slightly bemused.

After all, he'd said before the season began that he believed that he and the Schmidt team were capable of mounting a title challenge. If we didn't believe him, well, that's our problem.

The Frenchman's ability is widely recognised, and Schmidt has been on a constant upward trajectory for a couple of years now. His maiden win, which came in the second Detroit race, had been on the cards, and no-one was especially shocked when he managed to back it up at with a second victory in Baltimore.

That his successes came on street courses might seem predictable, but Pagenaud made significant strides on the oval front. He finished eighth at Indy, sixth at Iowa, and was one of the standout performers at Fontana, where he lost a lap, gained it back, and then charged up as high as fourth before dropping out with an engine problem.

Factor in that Pagenaud was racing in just his second full-time season in the series, and it's hard not to be impressed.

4. JUSTIN WILSON

Team: Dale Coyne Racing
Championship position: 6th (472 points)
Wins: 0
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1

It's ironic that 2013 will be remembered in part for something that it made people forget: that Dale Coyne Racing is a tiny team. Justin Wilson gelled beautifully with engineer Bill Pappas, and together they had the #19 car sitting fourth in the points coming out of the second-last race at Houston.

Like Castroneves and Andretti, Wilson's was a campaign based more on consistency than blinding pace, but the difference was that the Brit was drawing upon a fraction of his rivals' resources to achieve similar results.

True, he couldn't match the win that Mike Conway produced for the team at Detroit, but seasons are measured by what is achieved over an entire year rather than a single day when the planets all align. And to fully appreciate what Wilson achieved in 2013, you only have to look at who finished behind him in the points: all but one of the Andretti men, and two out of three Ganassi drivers.

His year ended with a spin and crash at Fontana that left him nursing a fractured pelvis, but perhaps the greater pain is the more recent news that Pappas will decamp to RLL next year.

5. WILL POWER

Team: Penske
Championship position: 4th (498 points)
Wins: 3
Poles: 3
Fastest laps: 3

St Petersburg: Landed on by JR Hildebrand. Barber: Wrong strategy. Long Beach: Hit by Tristan Vautier in the pits. Brazil: Caught fire. Indy: Fuel problem. Detroit 1: Off sequence. Detroit 2: Crash. Texas: Fast, handling fell away late in the race. Milwaukee: Podium! Iowa: Handling problems. Pocono: Fourth. Toronto 1: Crash. Toronto 2: Crash. Mid-Ohio: Fourth. Sonoma: Win! Baltimore: Crash, penalty. Houston 1: Unlucky yellow. Houston 2: Win! Fontana: Win!

How do you make sense of a season like that? If 2013 was meant to be Will Power's year of redemption after just missing the 2012 title, fate had other ideas. Power was never a factor in the championship, and publicly committed himself to supporting Helio Castroneves' cause relatively early.

But he also admitted that being free of the burden of title contention offered an opportunity to tackle some weaknesses. He didn't correct all of them: the crashes in Toronto looked avoidable. And true, his winless streak extended to well over a year before he finally broke the drought at Sonoma.

But his pace was usually strong even when things weren't going well, and by the end of the year he'd returned to the sort of form that marked him as a pre-season title favourite.

His exuberance at winning in Fontana - a race he'd privately targeted all year - might be interpreted as a warning shot for 2014, but with three wins from the last five races, that message was already clear.

6. MARCO ANDRETTI

Team: Andretti Autosport
Championship position: 5th (484 points)
Wins: 0
Poles: 2
Fastest laps: 0

Marco Andretti had a lot to prove this year after a horrible 2012. Top of his 'to do' list for the year was to up his game on street courses, and a podium in the curtain-raiser at St Petersburg offered the first return on the work that he'd put in during the winter.

But starting well means nothing if you can't back it up, and the real evidence of the progress made in the cockpit of the #25 car lay in the fact that he maintained a constant presence in the top five of the championship right through the year.

It's all the more remarkable that he managed to do that without actually winning a race - or even finishing second, for that matter. He was a legitimate contender for a place in Victory Lane a couple of times, only to fall short due to fuel mileage (Pocono), a yellow flag (Indy), or a broken shock (Iowa).

He still has some work ahead before he becomes a threat week-in, week-out, but the extent to which he was able to snap out of his 2012 tailspin points to a commitment and resilience that a few detractors might not have considered to be part of his arsenal.

Be honest: this time 12 months ago, would you have tipped him to be the highest-placed Andretti Autosport driver in the 2013 standings?

7. CHARLIE KIMBALL

Team: Chip Ganassi Racing
Championship position: 9th (427 points)
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 0

Kimball showed flashes of excitement during 2012, but 2013 marked a huge stride forward for the 28-year-old.

His maiden win at Mid-Ohio is the obvious beacon, and even if it owed a lot to a smart call from the Ganassi pitwall, Kimball still had to produce a heck of a pass on Simon Pagenaud to make it happen.

But the real marker of his progress came at Fontana. With team-mate Scott Dixon's championship on the line, Kimball looked completely at home flinging himself into a corner side-by-side with Helio Castroneves, and he was one of the fastest guys on the track over the course of a full stint.

His involvement in the evening was ultimately shortened by an engine failure, but by then he'd already made his point.

He's not the finished product yet, and post-season reflections of where he can improve will surely start with his consistency on street courses. The good news is that he's given himself a great springboard.

8. RYAN HUNTER-REAY

Team: Andretti Autosport
Championship position: 7th (469 points)
Wins: 2
Poles: 3
Fastest laps: 1

It's easier to list things that didn't conspire against Ryan Hunter-Reay's hopes of defending his championship, so let's do it. He was not attacked by coyotes. He did not sustain an injury while dancing. He did not vanish into the mountains for seven months on a journey of self-discovery.

Other than that, the American spent the season as an extraordinary magnet for misfortune. Normally one of the most positive drivers in the paddock, it was telling that towards the end of the year he admitted that he was all but expecting to step on a rake every time he walked into the paddock.

When Takuma Sato chose to fly into the Pocono pitlane at warp speed, it was Hunter-Reay's car that absorbed the impact. If a sensor was going to fail, a yellow going to fall at a bad time, or a tyre go flat, chances were high that Hunter-Reay would be at the centre of it. There's no doubt Andretti Autosport has already sat down and tallied how many points Hunter-Reay lost to weird stuff, and there's equally no doubt that the final number was high.

He wasn't always the innocent victim, as exemplified by accidents at Long Beach and the Sunday race at Detroit. But that he was able to finish seventh in the standings despite all of his misfortunes at least points to how much speed he had on the rare occasions that things went well.

9. JAMES HINCHCLIFFE

Team: Andretti Autosport
Championship position: 8th (449 points)
Wins: 3
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 1

The Canadian entered the season still hunting for his first win. After just four races he already had two to his credit, laying down what seemed at the time to be a pretty solid claim to championship contention.

Those two wins bookended two DNFs - electrical trouble at Barber; shunt on a restart at Long Beach. And while Hinch added a third victory to his CV with a storming drive at Iowa, those two early mis-steps would ultimately prove to be the greater harbinger for how his year would pan out.

Securing three victories in a year with 10 different winners is no mean feat, and on that basis, Hinchcliffe has plenty to feel satisfied about.

And if he needs an extra pick-me-up, he can just go to YouTube and watch his last-lap move on Takuma Sato in Brazil; maybe the best passing move of the year.

But whether he actually will feel satisfied by all of that is another question, and a fair one. High as the high points were, they were countered by too many weekends where Hinchcliffe was more or less invisible.

His homework for the winter: figure out why, and what to do about it.

10. TONY KANAAN

Team: KV Racing Technology
Championship position: 11th (397 points)
Wins: 1
Poles: 0
Fastest laps: 2

Or, as the fans in Celtic's end might have sung, 'Are you Dario Franchitti in disguise?' Just as was the case for the Scot last year, Kanaan's victory at the Brickyard helped to wallpaper over an otherwise uncharacteristically quiet season. Not only that, but it also proved the deciding factor that allowed the Brazilian veteran to claim the final place in this year's AUTOSPORT Top 10.

Kanaan hates being spoken of as an oval specialist, but it was on left-turn-only weekends that he shone brightest during 2013. Indy was the obvious highlight, and while he won the race under yellows, you could argue that he did so by design: his conservative approach to the previous restart was based on the correct guess that there would be another caution.

All that said, he was often quicker than he got credit for on street courses: his season started with a smart drive from 11th to fourth at St Pete, and he both qualified and raced well early in the Toronto weekend before hitting the barriers in Sunday's outing.

Unfortunately, that trip into the wall was not Kanaan's only self-inflicted exit over the course of the season. It's one thing to argue that the set-up wasn't always where he wanted it, especially on road courses, but that doesn't change the number of points squandered cheaply over the latter part of the year.

HONOURABLE MENTIONS

It feels strange to have got this deep into the season review without writing about Dario Franchitti, but 2013 was a weird year for the four-time champion.

His qualifying pace was good, often great - indeed, his record of four poles for the year was unmatched. But for all sorts of different reasons, it rarely came together on race day.

Sometimes he was the victim of mechanical or set-up problems, or a long pitstop. Other times, he'd qualify well only to be issued an engine penalty that consigned him to the midfield, thereby compromising his afternoon before it even began.

Any concerns over whether Franchitti still 'has it' can be eliminated simply by getting onto YouTube and watching him scythe through the field to finish fourth in Sunday's Toronto race after breaking his front wing on the first lap.

And, as has been noted elsewhere, at the time of the crash that ended his season prematurely in Houston, he was pushing like hell on the last lap in the hopes of securing 10th place. Speed? Check. Dedication? Check. Mojo? Here's hoping.

Takuma Sato's season also warrants a mention, both for the breakout victory at Long Beach - a result he came one corner short of repeating in Brazil - and for the manner in which things fell apart.

The Japanese driver was leading the championship after Sao Paolo, and was fourth as late as Milwaukee. So to finish up 17th represents a pretty spectacular collapse.

Some of the downturn can be attributed to overdriving, with the pitlane accident in Pocono a particular standout.

Behind the scenes, he was also nursing a wrist injury for much of the season; a condition that he further aggravated at least twice. He insisted that it was not affecting his performance, but it can't have helped.