The six major IndyCar subplots to follow in 2021

The 2021 IndyCar season that gets underway at Barber Motorsports Park this weekend promises to be one of the best for many years.

Featuring arguably the deepest talent pool since the pre-Split era, with a seven-time NASCAR Cup champion, the reigning Australian Supercars champion and a 10-time Formula 1 podium finisher forming part of a remarkable rookie crop, this season will feature nine previous winners of the Indianapolis 500 including returning greats Helio Castroneves and Juan Pablo Montoya, while Tony Kanaan's retirement has been put on hold for a return to Chip Ganassi Racing.

At the front, both Ganassi and Penske have taken on new talent that they hope will bolster one side over the other in their ongoing rivalry, while Andretti Autosport seeks to put an indifferent 2020 firmly behind it.

Here, Autosport picks out the six biggest subplots to keep up with.

Scott McLaughlin, Team Penske Chevrolet

Photo by: IndyCar Series

1. The star rookie at Penske

When Robert Wickens took pole position and nearly won his first IndyCar race in 2018, some people were aghast. Was this not an indictment of the level of IndyCar drivers?

No, Wickens is a superb driver with extensive and successful open-wheel experience, who made a living out of touring car (DTM) racing when his single-seater opportunities ran dry. Getting back in a fast open-wheel car, he took little time to rediscover the outer limits of his abilities; his only self-doubts were the need to exploit the extra grip of the red (softer compound) Firestone tyres, and how to fuel-save while going fast. 

Now Scott McLaughlin, three-time and reigning Australian Supercars champion, appears to have similar potential – but remarkably, with virtually no open-wheel background. Of course, he also faces a similar learning curve to the one Wickens did three years ago, but the Kiwi star’s best sector times in his toe-dipping first IndyCar weekend at St Petersburg last October – and his pace in last year’s Spring Training – showed what vast potential he has. So does the fact that Team Penske, which rarely takes on rookies, shipped him across the Pacific after the combo kicked the opposition Down Under. 

PLUS: Why McLaughlin is wrong to label 2020 his best title

As the only newbie taking on all the races on the IndyCar schedule, obviously the IndyCar Rookie of the Year title is a lock, so McLaughlin’s ambitions should and will stretch far beyond that. If he really can sew his best sectors together while the red tyres are at their peak, you can expect to see him make it through to the Firestone Fast Six in qualifying on several occasions.

Jonathan Diuguid, McLaughlin’s race engineer, is one of the wisest at understanding what’s best for his driver to make him feel comfortable, and that’s going to be a confidence booster on the ovals too, where the rookie will have the most to learn.  

Romain Grosjean, Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing

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2. Grosjean's fresh start

“Romain has come into this with the right attitude – pretty excited and dedicated to learning,” says Dale Coyne of his latest rookie, ex-Formula 1 driver Romain Grosjean. “He’s been a very good student and we expect him to shine often.  

“I think he’s a bit surprised – in a positive way – at the range of adjustments in IndyCar. It’s a spec series, but you can do a lot to the cars to adjust them… It’s just that there’s only two or three combinations that work in a given session, in given track conditions on a given weekend. So that’s when you have to just say, ‘This is as good as it gets; now I have to run what we brung.’” 

That is as good an explanation as any of what a former F1 driver has to get used to when switching to IndyCar, but what Grosjean might regard as a limitation is also what attracted him to the series: the gaps between the haves and have-nots are minimal, in terms of car potential. Therefore a man of his obvious talent can expect to shine. 

Top 10: Ranking the 10 best F1-to-Indycar converts

Sure, his first test started inauspiciously, as he wasted little time in throwing the car at the scenery at Barber Motorsports Park. But at Laguna Seca he was on the pace of redoubtable team-mate Ed Jones. 

Coyne landed Grosjean after ex-Super Formula star Alex Palou moved to Chip Ganassi Racing for his second season, and Coyne reckons he may have got the slightly better end of the deal.

“I rate Alex as a qualifier but he needed to improve his racecraft,” he says. “Not just racing wheel-to-wheel but turning in the strong in-laps and out-laps, getting the most out of tyres whether they’re junk at the end of a stint or new at the start of a stint.

“I don’t think tyre management is going to be an issue for an ex-F1 driver, and I think everyone knows Romain likes to have a go when he’s racing. He may take it carefully at first, but I think he’s going to be aggressive.” 

Jimmie Johnson, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda

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3. NASCAR great’s single-seater switch

First, huge kudos to anyone who’s got nothing to prove but still wants to lay down a challenge for himself – such as moving into open-wheel racing at the age of 45. Jimmie Johnson will forever be in the NASCAR pantheon because his sheer consistency, pace and race smarts earned him not only 83 Cup wins but also seven championships. He’s one of motorsport’s golden lights in the 21st century, and perhaps that means none of us should consider a run of indifferent results in an alien discipline to be hurtful to his status.  

Can we expect better than “indifferent”? Maybe… but probably not.

Insight: Why Johnson isn't daunted by starting from scratch in IndyCar

In his final pre-season test at Barber Motorsports Park, Johnson was within 1.4 seconds of his Chip Ganassi Racing team-mate Scott Dixon; in the last qualifying session at the same track, the top 23 cars were covered by 0.9s. Now while you still have to commend JJ, and note that he is trimming the margin down with every test, the worry is that there will not be enough test days or race weekend sessions for him to make serious inroads into that deficit, and that may bug Johnson himself, however rational we know him to be.  

“There’s so much for Jimmie to unlearn – 20 years of stock cars! – that it’s almost unfair to expect him to get with it in IndyCar,” says one paddock veteran. “If we had unlimited testing like in the old days, you know Chip would have run him at any and every track this winter, and I bet you he’d be on it from the first round. He’d be tired, but he’d be on it! That’s how talented he is.

“But the way testing is now, it might take him three seasons to show his potential, and by then, obviously age is the problem…”

Yeah, it’s going to be tough.

Patricio O'Ward, Arrow McLaren SP Chevrolet

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4. Arrow McLaren SP to join the big guns

Pregnant with latent promise, the progress of Arrow McLaren SP will be one of the most exciting reasons to watch IndyCar this season. Pato O’Ward has led three of the off-season tests, including one on an oval, so he and race engineer Will Anderson are continuing to build the momentum that we watched gather throughout the 2020 season. 

Most remarkable in terms of O’Ward, for those who already knew he was quick, was the lack of mistakes, the maturity to rein it back in whenever he felt he didn’t quite have the car to go for the win. The big leap from the team’s point of view was that its cars regularly rolled off the truck on or very near the pace. That was an important quality last year when the duration of race weekends was minimised, and will remain so this year, as all seven road-course races get squeezed down to two-day affairs. 

Felix Rosenqvist admits he hasn’t quite hit his sweet spot within Arrow McLaren SP’s set-up parameters, which is why he’s been a couple of tenths off O’Ward in testing. That’s the theory, anyway, and it holds water as Rosenqvist all but matched Scott Dixon in qualifying while he was at Ganassi, and no one is doubting he’s a quality driver. But trying to beat a super-confident O’Ward in race or qualifying trim would cause even a series vet to breathe deep, so how Rosenqvist responds to this challenge will make or break how he’s perceived within the paddock. 

As Will Power remarked in February: “There’s no way Pato is not gonna be a title contender. He’s fast, he doesn’t make big mistakes and that team is getting better all the time.”

Sebastien Bourdais, A.J. Foyt Enterprises Chevrolet

Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images

5. Bourdais to boost Foyt

The combination of Sebastien Bourdais and AJ Foyt Racing is going to teach a lesson to any team owner who thinks that being merely ‘good’ is good enough in IndyCar these days. What this team needed was a true ace in the cockpit, and that is precisely what it has in 2021. Bourdais still brings great speed, but he’s far from one-dimensional. 

The team’s technical director Mike Colliver says: “[Bourdais’s] wealth of knowledge is a huge help from a couple standpoints. One, he understands mechanically what the car is doing, and secondly, he gives the changes to the car a fair shot. He will go out and run six or seven laps, and maybe the first two laps it doesn’t feel great. Maybe he’ll change something in his driving style or he’ll wait a little longer for the tyre pressures to come up or do a click on the rear bar. And then he comes in and tells you it either worked or didn’t and why.  

“His analytical approach combined with his experience is really refreshing. He doesn’t get rattled; he’s very calm and meticulous in the car.” 

There’s no denying that the team has made a step forward, to such an extent that Bourdais led the most recent test at Barber Motorsports Park, once laps using push-to-pass boost were ignored. 

“The engineering group is really working together well,” adds Colliver. “From the data guys to those doing simulations, the junior engineers, Daniele’s [Cucchiaroni, performance engineer] knowledge… And Justin [Taylor, Bourdais’s engineer] is doing a great job. Everybody is pulling in the same direction.” 

Bourdais adds: “With Barber being the season opener, you want to be cautiously optimistic. I think we should have a good card to play and be in the mix, which is always encouraging, so I’m looking forward to it.” 

Bourdais, 42, has 37 wins to his name. Don’t bet against him adding to that tally, if Foyt’s pitcrew can match the potential of the engineers and lead driver. 

Rinus VeeKay, Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet

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6. VeeKay’s continued rise

Most people who have watched Indy Lights over the past few years will tell you that Rinus VeeKay belongs with Pato O’Ward and Colton Herta in the list of ‘graduates with great potential’, and last year wasn’t going to shake the faith. The Dutch teenager made an utter mess of the opening round of the season at Texas Motor Speedway with two crashes, but thereafter only made ‘typical’ rookie errors, and in between drove with flashes of blinding pace.

His pole position and third place on the Indianapolis road course were well deserved, and he is both brave and tenacious.  

“If you pass Rinus, you need to keep looking in your mirrors because if you don’t have the pace to get away, he’ll be right back at you,” says one of his rivals. “He doesn’t give up. He’s a bit wild, but that’s OK.” 

Knowing VeeKay’s ability is so high, this throws the spotlight on his team, Ed Carpenter Racing, which last employed a driver of title potential in 2016, when Josef Newgarden entered the final round of the season still mathematically in with a shot at the crown. In the intervening four and a bit years, things have shifted in terms of the relative strength of the teams.

So does ECR still have what it takes? If not, it’s going to lose VeeKay, who is as ambitious as he is quick, and could have several suitors by mid-summer.

Rinus VeeKay, Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: IndyCar Series