IndyCar Season Review: Danica Patrick

2010 will go down as a year that Danica Patrick would like to forget.

The media darling of the IZOD IndyCar Series emulated a career path chosen by Tony Stewart in 1998, fitting in a handful of stock car races around and in between her primary IndyCar commitments, and both sets of results suffered in 2010. Patrick barely slid into 10th place in points after the season finale at Homestead, marking the first time in her IndyCar career that she failed to improve on the previous season's results.

In 2009, Patrick finished an impressive fifth in the championship, tops among the non-Penske and Ganassi drivers. But the addition of a third Penske car had a lot of pundits confident on who would take the top five spots. Meanwhile, some miserable stock car spots and a restructuring of the new Andretti Autosport team had others wondering if Patrick could keep up her streak of improvements.

It was not to be the case.

Never a shining star on the road courses, Patrick's finishes to begin the season this year were nothing short of abysmal. Twice, in the new events in Sao Paulo and Alabama, she failed to finish on the lead lap. While teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay took victory at Long Beach, she finished a subpar 16th, fighting rookie Simona de Silvestro, who was equipped with a far older and slower car, for the position. Patrick ended the early road course segment of the season 16th in points, her title hopes for the year already all but gone. An 11th place run at Kansas, two laps down, put her more than 100 back of leader Will Power, and that was that.

Greater troubles came in qualifying for the Indianapolis 500. Patrick had never failed to start worse than 10th in the race until this year, when she could only muster a 23rd place run. On television interviews, Patrick threw her Andretti Autosport crew under the bus, blaming them for an unstable and slow car, to a chorus of boos from the speedway faithful. After apologizing to her crew, who received nothing but praise in most subsequent races, she managed to finish sixth in the event.

The next race at Texas proved to be Patrick's strongest run of the year. She managed to lead a lap, her only lap led all season, but in the end fell just over a second short of rival Ryan Briscoe's pace. The run had some suggesting that Patrick's season, while not championship-worthy, could at least elevate her past 11th place in points.

But Patrick didn't visit the top five again for the next eight races, with a sixth at Toronto the lone highlight. In that span, Patrick placed 15th or worse four times, continuing her run of road course futility. In fact, in that championship subcategory, she finished a disappointing 15th, as road course champion Power scored nearly three times as many points on road courses as she did.

Returning to Motegi, the site of her lone career IndyCar win in 2008, Patrick had nothing for a dominant Helio Castroneves, but still mustered a fifth place finish. At Homestead, she traded chop blocks with teammate Tony Kanaan to score another second place finish, before learning that Kanaan's sponsor, 7-Eleven, would shift its marketing dollars to her next season. These two runs allowed her to slip by Justin Wilson for the final spot in the top 10 of the championship standings.

To say Patrick's 2010 was difficult would be to understate. Hard luck results and a slip in the standings weren't the only issues. Infighting at Andretti, particularly with Kanaan, dogged her for much of the season, and the celebrity that once came with being IndyCar's first female winner died out as she began to shift attention to stock cars. When ESPN referred to her as "NASCAR's Danica Patrick" at the ESPYs, all ties to her former stardom may have been lost.

Patrick is safe at Andretti for next season, guaranteed a ride by a large GoDaddy contract. She may stand to benefit from potential contraction; if the team cannot find sponsorship to keep Kanaan and Hunter-Reay aboard, she will likely stand to inherit some of their teams' top crew members. But driving in two distinctly different disciplines is a difficult task for anyone to imagine, and if Patrick struggles in stock cars next year as she did this year, it may once again affect her IndyCar performance.

IndyCar Season Review: Tony Kanaan

Somehow, despite all of the difficult moments of his 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season, Tony Kanaan still managed to be "best of the rest."

Even an abysmal 13.2 average start, infighting with teammate Danica Patrick, and nearly missing the Indianapolis 500 couldn't hold Kanaan back, as the driver took one win and seven top five finishes on the way to a sixth place finish in points in his eighth season driving for Andretti Autosport.

The season began steadily, with 10th place finishes in Sao Paulo and St. Petersburg, an eighth at Barber, and a fifth at Long Beach, positioning him comfortably in the top 10 in points. At Kansas, Kanaan managed to pass 12 cars to finish third, giving the team some momentum heading into Indianapolis.

Kanaan, like his team owner Michael Andretti, has a history of bad luck in the Indianapolis 500, and this year was no different. But instead of the usual in-race failure - he had crashed in the previous two runnings of the event - his biggest issues came before the race even started.

Crashes on both days of qualifying meant the team barely had enough time to prepare a car to make a run. Eventually, Kanaan put a car on the last row of the grid, starting last after the team went to a different chassis for the race. Despite the team's moribund outlook for the race, Kanaan managed to salvage an 11th-place finish.

After a sixth place run at Texas, the series headed to Iowa Speedway. For the fourth race in a row, Kanaan qualified outside of the top 10, starting the event in 15th. But a strong car allowed him to pass other cars easily, and Kanaan led his first 62 laps of the season on the way to his first victory since Richmond in 2008.

The road courses were less successful for Kanaan than the ovals, and mid-pack finishes at Edmonton and Mid-Ohio (again, attributed to poor qualifying runs) contributed to his falling back in the standings. Kanaan finished a lap off the pace at Edmonton, the only lap he failed to complete all season.

The ovals, once again, were strong for Kanaan, as he took three top five finishes in the final four events of the season, with no runs worse than a seventh at Motegi. These runs allowed him to pass teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay for sixth in points, where he eventually ended the season. His best finish during the stretch came at Homestead, where he lost a heated battle with Patrick for second place.

Kanaan's oval runs were good for fourth in the series' oval championship. He only came six points short of Scott Dixon for third in that competition. But his so-so road course results put him a distant eighth in that subcategory, almost 30 points behind seventh place.

The clear weakness of Kanaan's team during 2010 was qualifying. His only front-row start of the year came at St. Petersburg; in the 11-race stretch from Kansas to Kentucky, Kanaan qualified no better than eighth and was 20th or worse four times. His intra-squad squabbles with Patrick also didn't help his case; the two traded chop blocks on many of the series' ovals, much to the frustration of team management.

To add insult to injury, days after the season finale at Homestead, longtime sponsor 7-Eleven announced that they would be abandoning an eight-year relationship with Kanaan to support Patrick in a reduced role, leaving his plans for the 2011 season uncertain at this point. While both driver and team appear to be interested in maintaining their relationship, the best IndyCar driver not to wear a Penske or Ganassi firesuit in 2010 may have a lot of suitors for next season.

IndyCar Season Review: Scott Dixon

For the second year in a row, Scott Dixon watched his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate hoist the IZOD IndyCar Series championship trophy.

Once again playing second fiddle to Dario Franchitti, Dixon nevertheless assembled a solid season, taking three victories on his way to a third place finish in the points. It was his fifth consecutive top five finish in the standings, after a fourth place in 2006, runner-up runs in 2007 and 2009, and the 2008 championship.

It was by no means as strong as his runs in the past three seasons, and this time around Dixon wasn't directly involved in the title fight at Homestead. There weren't quite as many top five finishes, even if there were still plenty of top tens. And while Franchitti solidly ate away at Will Power's points lead over the final few races of the season, Dixon didn't do much to close the gap.

But yet again, the consistent New Zealander strung together enough decent finishes to stay ahead of most of the field and accept an award at the season-ending banquet.

Dixon's season started off with an okay road course stretch, highlighted by a second place finish in the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, but marred by a DNF at St. Petersburg. He entered the first stretch of oval races tied for fifth in points with Franchitti, 60 back of a dominant Power.

From there, he immediately asserted his usual championship force, taking his second consecutive win at Kansas, scoring top five finishes at Indianapolis and Texas, and entered the second stretch of road course races second in points, only 11 markers back of the lead. Things were looking good for Dixon, as he had finished fourth or better in 2009 at four of the next five tracks on the schedule.

But a low top-10 at Watkins Glen and a DNF at Toronto dropped him to third place and 78 points out of the lead, and even a win at Edmonton didn't help him make up too much ground. When the series said goodbye to road and street courses for the year at Sonoma, Dixon found himself 95 points out of the lead, still in third.

Dixon had some major opportunities to make up ground on points leader Power during the final four oval races of the season. In fact, Dixon had been the best oval driver of the past two IndyCar seasons, scoring 482 points on ovals in 2008 and 406 in 2009. Such luck was not on his side in 2010.

Finishes of eighth, seventh, and sixth at Chicagoland, Kentucky, and Motegi, respectively, left him 90 points out of the lead going into Homestead. To make matters worse, he had been passed for third in the standings by Helio Castroneves, whose wins at Kentucky and Motegi propelled him up two spots in the standings from where he had been after Chicago.

Dixon's job at Homestead was simple: ensure that Franchitti would win the championship over Power, while also trying to get by Castroneves for third in points. Dixon qualified directly behind his teammate and helped keep some of the other competitors at bay while Franchitti led the most laps of the race.

When Franchitti dropped back in the field in the race's late stages, Dixon assumed the point and led 32 of the race's final 33 laps to take his third and final victory of the year.

IndyCar Race Review: Cafes do Brazil Indy 300

The final race of this year's IZOD IndyCar Series season ended in triumph for Chip Ganassi and heartbreak for Roger Penske.

Ganassi driver Scott Dixon took the checkers in the Cafes do Brazil Indy 300, the final IndyCar race to be held at Homestead-Miami Speedway, while an eighth-place finish was more than enough for teammate Dario Franchitti to clinch his third championship in four years.

Meanwhile, championship leader Will Power, Team Penske's best driver this year, felt the agony of defeat after brushing the wall with only 65 laps to go. Trying to get by lapped traffic, he brushed the outside wall and damaged his right rear suspension. Power finished a disappointing 25th, completing a 17-point swing in favor of Franchitti this weekend that gave the Scot this year's championship by five points.

Franchitti, however, did not escape drama himself; after falling in the field toward the end of the race, Milka Duno wrecked in front of him very late in the race, which would have caused him to finish either 23rd or 24th and lose the title by under 10 points.

Franchitti, Penske driver Ryan Briscoe, and Andretti Autosport Tony Kanaan dominated the early part of the race, but Dixon, who started second, began to lead laps as the race wore on. While Franchitti led a majority of laps, with 128 out of the 200 spent pacing the field, Dixon took the lead for good with 27 to go and extended a nearly three second lead over second place.

That second step on the podium was occupied by none other than Danica Patrick, who is more than happy to finish a tough 2010 season. Patrick's strong run, combined with a 21st-place finish by Justin Wilson, allowed her to barely sneak into 10th place in points despite a slew of problems and poor finishes this season.

Kanaan managed to take third, with Briscoe fourth and Helio Castroneves fifth.

The top ten in the final championship standings were Franchitti, Power, Dixon, Castroneves, Briscoe, Kanaan, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Marco Andretti, Dan Wheldon, and Patrick.

IndyCar Race Preview: Cafes do Brazil Indy 300

The IZOD IndyCar Series will take the green flag one last time at the Homestead-Miami Speedway tonight for the Cafes do Brazil Indy 300. Besides being the final race of the IndyCar season, it will be the final race of the near future at Homestead, after the longtime open-wheel hosts and the sanctioning body could not come to an agreement for a 2011 event.

As such, expect tonight to be a show of great magnitude, with both sides looking to go out with a bang.

The biggest storyline remains the championship battle between leader Will Power and second place Dario Franchitti, the defending series champ. Franchitti will start on pole alongside his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, Scott Dixon. Meanwhile, Power's Team Penske machine will roll off the grid third.

The pole comes with a bonus point, one of three available per weekend. Franchitti came into the race weekend 12 points behind Power, meaning a win after leading the most laps in the race would seal the championship for him no matter what Power does; since first place pays 10 more points than second, even a 1-2 between the two contenders would mean Power would lose the title by a single point.

But neither Power nor his Team Penske teammates are willing to concede the first IndyCar title for owner Roger Penske since 2006 so easily. Teammate Ryan Briscoe paced final practice after qualifying fourth, while Helio Castroneves will attempt to back up wins in the series' past two races with a march to the front from 10th on the grid. Castroneves and Andretti Autosport's Tony Kanaan will actually serve as co-grand marshals of the event, giving the command to start engines from the cockpits of their cars.

Homestead marks the final opportunity of the year for a handful of winless drivers to grab one checkered flag before the season ends. The top seven in points have all won a race, but eighth place Dan Wheldon, ninth place Marco Andretti, 10th place Justin Wilson, and 11th place Danica Patrick are just some of the big names that have not seen victory lane this year. Of them, Wheldon stands the best shot; the three-time Homestead winner (2005-07) and Panther Racing have been achingly close to victory in the past few domestic oval races.

The race will also inevitably mark the final event for a handful of driver-team combinations, as plenty of teams will be looking to move up in the ranks for 2011. The question right now is who will stay and who will go. As recently as last week, Panther and Wheldon were considered the most likely to separate, after two years of mutual frustration and a lawsuit filed for $2.5 million in back wages by Wheldon's management. Now that the suit has been settled, however, Panther owner John Barnes is discussing bringing Wheldon back.

Justin Wilson and his Z-Line Designs sponsorship are a hot commodity, as are the talents of Simona de Silvestro and Graham Rahal. Meanwhile, a handful of Firestone Indy Lights graduates appear ready for the big time in 2011, with Ana Beatriz, James Hinchcliffe, and Sebastian Saavedra likely to attract at least some interest from team owners.

Meanwhile, in the Lights race, Pippa Mann will roll off the grid first. Charlie Kimball will join her on the front row, while series champion Jean-Karl Vernay will start 12th and clinch this year's championship upon taking the green flag.

IndyCar Teams Prepare For Homestead

No less than 11 IZOD IndyCar Series teams decided to utilize a Monday testing session at the Homestead-Miami Speedway in preparation for Saturday night's Cafes do Brazil Indy 300.

The top five drivers in IndyCar points - Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti of Chip Ganassi Racing, as well as Ryan Briscoe, Helio Castroneves, and series leader Will Power of Team Penske - all took advantage of the open test session. Ganassi will look to win its third consecutive championship as a team, while its drivers will look to continue a stranglehold on the championship that began with Franchitti's 2007 title as a member of Andretti Green Racing. Meanwhile, Power will look to deliver owner Roger Penske his first IndyCar title since Sam Hornish accomplished the feat in 2006.

IndyCar mainstays A.J. Foyt Enterprises and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing each brought their full-time programs to the track as well, with Vitor Meira and Justin Wilson lapping for the two teams, respectively. DRR also provided Ana Beatriz with a car for the test session, as she will replace the still-recovering Mike Conway in that team's second car for the finale.

Beatriz wasn't the only limited-program driver to take advantage of the session, however. Sarah Fisher took her team to the track, carrying a bright pink paint scheme on the No. 67 Dollar General Dallara-Honda in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Meanwhile, Ed Carpenter made laps on behalf of Vision Racing and their allies at Panther Racing. Finally, Sebastian Saavedra made his debut for Conquest Racing, driving a No. 36 Dallara-Honda sponsored by many of Saavedra's personal backers.

27 cars are on the entry list for Homestead, an exceptionally healthy number considering some of the smaller car counts of last season. Provided that everybody shows up, this year's season finale will feature four more cars than last year's event did, though rumors persist that the marginally funded HVM Racing have been locked out of their Indianapolis shop and may not make the event with driver Simona de Silvestro.

Saavedra Returns to IndyCar at Homestead

After leaving Bryan Herta Autosport midway through the Firestone Indy Lights round at Kentucky Speedway, Sebastian Saavedra has landed on his feet for the Cafes do Brazil Indy 300, this year's IZOD IndyCar Series finale, at Homestead.

Saavedra will pilot the No. 36 Dallara-Honda for Conquest Racing, with the help of fan sponsorship contributions and a sponsor list that includes Laboratories Sumimed, Autoniza, Smart Life, Skullcandy, Mobil 1, Coldeportes, and Seringel, according to a tweet sent yesterday.

At Conquest, he will drive alongside Bertrand Baguette, team owner Eric Bachelart's pet project, who has progressed into a respectable IndyCar driver despite missing the first two races of the season and joining the series with zero prior oval experience. It will be Saavedra's second IndyCar race of the season, following an Indianapolis 500 appearance with BHA that saw him start last and finish 23rd after an accident.

Saavedra becomes the fourth driver to pilot Conquest's second car since Mario Romancini was let go due to funding issues. Prior to his signing, Francesco Dracone, Tomas Scheckter, and Roger Yasukawa have all driven the second car for the team, which typically brings on pay-drivers to make the grid due to a lack of sponsorship.

Meanwhile, Herta has not yet settled on a replacement driver for his Indy Lights team, though Daniel Herrington, the team's 2009 lead driver and Saavedra's last-minute replacement for Kentucky, will likely get the call.

Beatriz Returns For Homestead Season Finale

Dreyer & Reinbold Racing have announced that Ana Beatriz will drive the No. 24 Roll Coater Dallara-Honda in this year's IZOD IndyCar Series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway next weekend. Beatriz will make her fourth start of the season in the Cafes do Brazil Indy 300, the track's final IndyCar race before dropping from the schedule.

With Mike Conway focusing on completing his rehabilitation for the 2011 season instead of attempting the finale, the team needed to find a solid replacement driver, preferably one with race experience at DRR. Those fitting the criteria included Beatriz, Paul Tracy, Tomas Scheckter, and J.R. Hildebrand.

Beatriz has made three starts thus far this season, at Sao Paulo, Indianapolis, and Chicagoland. She finished 13th and on the lead lap in the Sao Paulo Indy 300, 21st at Indianapolis (completing 196 of 200 laps due to contact), and 24th at Chicago after a mechanical failure. None of those three events have seen her in the same car; she drove the No. 23 in Brazil, the No. 25 at Indianapolis, and the No. 24 at Chicago.

Her jump to IndyCar's highest level this year came after two consecutive seasons in Firestone Indy Lights, which saw her finish third and eighth in points, respectively, and score two race wins: the Sunbelt Rentals 100 at Nashville in 2008, and the Miller Lite 100 at Iowa last year.

Meanwhile, Conway has taken a conservative approach with his rehabilitation. He suffered a compression fracture in his back and a broken leg in a spectacular crash at the Indianapolis 500 in May. Rumors suggested that he could return to the car as soon as the Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma, but eventually the decision was made to wait. Conway's injuries have healed and he has adopted a rigorous training program to ensure that he will be 100% ready for next season's opener at St. Petersburg.

The No. 24 car was primed for a breakout season with Conway, but since the injury the revolving door of drivers have kept it decidedly mid-pack. The team has seen four top-10 finishes this year; three came from Conway in the season's first five races, while the fourth came with Graham Rahal at Iowa. Its best finish was an eighth place in the Sao Paulo season opener. Meanwhile, the car has seen DNFs at St. Petersburg (Conway), Indianapolis (Conway), Sonoma (Hildebrand), Chicago (Beatriz), and Motegi (Tracy).

It hasn't been all bad for DRR this season, however; new lead driver Justin Wilson has snagged two podium finishes and eight top-10s with only one DNF to rank a solid 10th in points. He also scored a pole at Toronto and led the most laps in that race. Also, DRR qualified four cars for the Indianapolis 500 for the second year in a row, albeit under less stressful circumstances than 2009's close calls.