Can Rossi head IndyCar's new era in 2020?

Alexander Rossi doesn't want to talk about Andretti Autosport's final pre-season test day. Not because anything went drastically wrong; more because it all went so well, and he doesn't want to give Autosport any specific technical details.

"A lot of information was gathered, it was really good, and I feel like the team is working at the highest level it's been at since I joined four years ago," says the California-born Rossi, who this weekend at St Petersburg begins his bid to claim his first IndyCar Series title. Second in the championship in 2018, and third last year, he continues: "I feel like this has been our best off-season and we're all feeling very encouraged.

"I don't think we've focused on one area, even though we identified road courses as a weakness for us in the second half of 2019. We've taken the approach as if we struggled at every type of track last year, and need to improve our approach across the board. Now we've had two really strong tests [Circuit of The Americas for Spring Training in February, and the 2 March test on the Sebring short course] in terms of the data collected and verification that the off-season development went in the right direction.

"We've also taken a big step forward in terms of off-track preparation like pitstop practice. The mindset of everyone from drivers to engineers to crew members is really good and positive - but with emotions held in check."

Certainly Rossi sounds confident enough to downplay the effects of the new-for-2020 IndyCar aeroscreen. The Red Bull Advanced Technologies-developed device has presented a hurdle for all IndyCar team engineers as they tackle the thorny problem of ameliorating the effect of revised weight distribution now that the centre of gravity is higher and further forward than before. Adjusting the car's handling is less of an issue than ensuring the front tyres aren't overworked.

"We don't have all the details yet, because obviously we've only done a day and a half of testing and they've been on relatively high-grip tracks," Rossi explains. "We lost a whole day plus a morning of Spring Training due to bad weather at COTA, and now we've tested at Sebring, which was rubbered up and it behaves more like a road course than a street course on days like that. So with St Pete being relatively low grip, our views may change regarding how the weight of the screen affects the tyres.

"But that said, I think we've got a general idea of what the aeroscreen does and the effect isn't hugely dramatic. It changes set-up philosophies a little bit, but no one's having to reinvent the wheel: it's all pretty manageable. Firestone is coming with different solutions to deal with the change, and at Sebring we ran the 2020 St Pete-spec tyre and it seemed good, and we're content with the fall-off."

Rossi shows similar equanimity when discussing engine performance. "I guess after the past couple of years anyone on either side of the fence is concerned about potential for Indy," he says. "Has Honda [the Andretti team's supplier] caught up at the top end? Has the opposition [Chevrolet] made the same amount of progress and retained an edge? We don't know.

"The mindset of everyone from drivers to engineers to crew members is really good and positive - but with emotions held in check."Alexander Rossi, Andretti Autosport

"But all the other tracks in the series are very different formats from Indy, and we simply don't know about any of them at this stage. We'll see when we get to St Pete, but if there is a problem it's not one we need to focus on at this stage."

The million-dollar question then is whether Rossi is finally going to be able to topple Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing to earn Andretti Autosport its first IndyCar championship since Ryan Hunter-Reay took the 2012 crown.

"Look, I go into the season with the same mindset every single year - to win," he says. "During our [contract renewal] negotiations in the middle of last year I told the team there were a lot of things I wanted, areas where I thought we all as a group needed to be better. They were receptive to what I was saying, and a lot of those changes have been implemented.

"And now I can see the progress - big things, little things, people things - and I think everyone is happy with what's been done and I can't see any areas where we're lacking. So to answer your question, I believe we're better placed than ever before to challenge for the title."

The rivals to Rossi

Of course, taking on Penske and Ganassi is one part of Rossi's 2020 mission, but he also has to overcome the challenge from within the Andretti Autosport camp. Hunter-Reay seemed to lose his mojo last year but, providing his confidence has returned, the 2012 champion and 2014 Indy 500 winner is capable of beating everyone on his day.

The same could be said of a man at the other end of his IndyCar career, (nearly-)20-year-old Colton Herta, who scored two wins and three poles in his rookie season last year. By switching from the start-up Harding Steinbrenner Racing team, which had a technical partnership with Andretti Autosport, to become a fully subscribed member of Michael Andretti's squad, Herta no longer has even a tissue wall between himself and the others.

If that really does make a difference, it should help all involved and may uncover some secrets. Rossi, for example, says that although he loves working with Jeremy Milless as his race engineer, it's useful to have Herta's race engineer Nathan O'Rourke on hand too. Both Marco Andretti and Zach Veach have been doing revision - to the extent that during the off-season Marco even went back to Rob Wilson's High Performance Driving course to improve his technique - so that they aren't seen as the lame ducks in the team, but they can't yet expect to join the title-challenging group.

Just a podium or two would be regarded as a first step back to respectability. Still, Jack Harvey, driving for the Meyer Shank Racing team - which now has a technical partnership with AA - is a more likely candidate for top-three finishes. Chip Ganassi Racing has re-expanded in the off-season to become a three-car team, Marcus Ericsson joining fellow Swede and fellow IndyCar sophomore Felix Rosenqvist, along with five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon.

With the shutdown of the IMSA/Le Mans arm of the team following Ford's decision to end its successful GT programme, there has been a significant reshuffle at Ganassi's fabulously successful squad. Chris Simmons, who steered Dario Franchitti to three consecutive titles (2009-11) and two Indy 500s (2010 and 2012) and then won two more championships with Dixon (2015 and 2018), has become Ganassi's competition manager, replaced as race engineer on Dixon's car by Michael Cannon.

The latter has arrived from Dale Coyne Racing, perhaps crucially armed with knowledge of how to set up the current breed of IndyCar on ovals - the area in which Ganassi has proved most inconsistent since the current car arrived in 2018. With CGR managing director Mike Hull continuing to call strategy, it's near-impossible to imagine Dixon failing to be a title contender.

The team's technical director Julian Robertson will again serve as race engineer for Rosenqvist, who won last year's IndyCar rookie of the year title and finished sixth overall in the points table. The 28-year-old took well to IndyCar and, after a wobbly middle third to the season, regained his composure and should be a regular victory contender this year. Team manager Barry Wanser and Chip Ganassi himself will run him from trackside. Ericsson will be engineered by Brad Goldberg, who ran the Richard Westbrook/Ryan Briscoe Ford GT, and who also teased the very best out of Charlie Kimball while the Californian was at Ganassi.

Goldberg should be ideal for taming Ericsson's overenthusiasm in qualifying and bolstering the ex-F1 driver's self-confidence when being directly compared with a legend and one of the most versatile twentysomethings in racing today. Team Penske has won four of the past six IndyCar Series titles, and all three drivers responsible for that success remain onboard.

Team Penske has won four of the past six IndyCar titles, and all three drivers responsible for that success remain onboard. It's safe to say that Penske's trio will be absolutely formidable once more.

Two-time and reigning champion Josef Newgarden is clearly only getting stronger, blending great speed with race day savvy. He's an instinctive fighter, but 95% of the time remembers when to rein that in and not push his luck if he's to reach the season finale still in the title fight.

Will Power (above) has been the fastest IndyCar driver over a single lap for the past dozen years and also one of the masters of fuel-and-tyre-saving on race day. His only significant flaw remains his lack of anger management when outrageous fate or a team screw-up damages his potential; you can almost see the smoke coming out of his ears in such circumstances, and it sometimes results in a driving error that further hurts his race result and therefore impedes his path to a second championship.

Perhaps team owner Roger Penske stepping back from calling Power's strategy (to focus on minor things such as running the series and Indianapolis Motor Speedway) and being replaced by the soothing tones of Ron Ruzewski will help in that regard.

The other Penske driver is 2019 Indy 500 winner Simon Pagenaud, who usually doesn't have the same scintillating pace as Power but is better able to prevent irritations from reflecting in his driving and therefore is more consistent at amassing points. Moreover, last year he bounced back from a poor 2018 to look like a potential champion once more. He heads into the new season in strong spirits, and it's safe to say that Penske's trio will be absolutely formidable once more.

Best of the rest could be best of the best

There are newcomers and relative newcomers that we expect to mess with the big three teams quite regularly. While Rosenqvist and Herta were expected to shine as rookies in 2019 - brilliant talents with great cars - this year's fresh crop of full-timers has the opportunity to elevate previous 'B-class' teams to 'A-class' status.

Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports has morphed into Arrow McLaren SP, has switched from Honda to Chevrolet (if you need to ask why, read the last five years of Autosport back issues), hired Craig Hampson as R&D engineer, and ditched James Hinchcliffe and 2019 rookie Ericsson for the past two Indy Lights champions, Oliver Askew and Patricio O'Ward. Expect O'Ward to take the gung-ho, knife-in-the-teeth approach and be the better qualifier, Askew to be the more analytical driver who keeps the tyres under him for a whole stint and avoid error.

Ed Carpenter Racing has flushed out the sporadically fast Spencer Pigot and Ed Jones and replaced them with Askew's biggest rival in Lights, Rinus van Kalmthout - who has shown strong pace in pre-season testing - and Conor Daly, who finally gets a chance to run a whole season. Well, kind of/maybe. He gets an extra ECR entry for the Indy 500, but the other four ovals will see him cede his seat to team owner Ed Carpenter. But he will reprise his role as Max Chilton's sub at Carlin for those four ovals.

Trevor Carlin's mighty little team has revealed former F1 driver and IMSA ace Felipe Nasr will race for them this weekend, but its unclear how many (if any) starts former F2 contender Sergio Sette Camara might make. The other bright new star to watch is at Dale Coyne Racing, where funding from Team Goh has allowed 2019 Super Formula rookie star Alex Palou to cross the Pacific and jump in a car that will be run by Eric Cowdin, a man who has won races with Penske, Ganassi and Andretti.

Palou, who shone in tricky conditions in Japan, arrives effectively as a replacement for Sebastien Bourdais, although Santino Ferrucci has switched to the Vasser-Sullivan backed arm of the DCR squad. Coyne was disappointed to lose Hampson to Arrow McLaren SP and Cannon to Ganassi, but an Olivier Boisson/Cowdin combo is a strong one, and DCR now has a sim programme to help bridge the gap to the big teams.

Bourdais will run at least four races in the #14 car of AJ Foyt Racing - another team that has been through an off-season shake-up. He will give up this ride to mediocre Lights graduate Dalton Kellett for the other road/street-course races, while Tony Kanaan will step in for ovals. The second Foyt car will be driven full-time by Kimball.

Notable changes for 2020

The introduction of the aeroscreen (above) has naturally added a pitlane complication; but, aside from that, the replacement of Pocono Raceway with 0.75-mile Richmond Raceway, slightly lowered pit speed limits, and an increase in turbo boost to 1.5-bar for Indy 500 qualifying, IndyCar's other notable change for 2020 will be a poor one: the reintroduction of engine-related grid penalties.

A full-season entry is allocated four engines in a season that covers approximately 10,000 miles including race weekends, team tests and open tests, so both Chevrolet and Honda will be required to declare an approximate mileage limit of 2500 per engine. Henceforth any car that has its engine changed before a manufacturer's predetermined mileage limit has been reached will suffer a grid penalty in the next race - a six-place drop for road/street courses and a nine-place drop on ovals.

It's disappointing to appreciate that a driver who is leading at the season opener and suffers an engine blow-up will not only lose a substantial number of points there, but will also be penalised at the next race, unable to start higher than seventh on the grid. You can only hope it won't have an influence on the championship, which in all likelihood will be fought out by Rossi, Power, Dixon and Newgarden.