IndyCar Season Review: Marco Andretti

Marco Andretti has the best point-scoring season of his IZOD IndyCar Series career in 2010.

Standing on the bottom step of the podium three times this season, for his first podium finishes since the summer of 2008, Andretti matched his 2009 rank with an eighth place finish in the season standings. His 392 points were the most he'd scored in a season to date.

The third-generation driver entered the season with elevated expectations and a new long-term deal to drive for Andretti Autosport in his back pocket. 2009 had been a rough year for the team; none of the four Andretti cars took any victories, and Marco fared no better than fourth at Texas. However, sponsor Venom Energy Drink signed a long-term deal with the team, looking for heightened results this year.

Sao Paulo, given those expectations, was a nightmare. Andretti had a history with Mario Moraes, whose poor judgment on the first lap of the 2009 Indianapolis 500 knocked both drivers out of contention. This year, during the first lap carnage in that city's inaugural race, an out-of-practice Moraes, who hadn't signed a deal until after preseason testing, went into the first corner too hot and landed on top of an innocent Andretti's car.

Andretti led a lap at St. Petersburg, the site of his first career Indy Lights win in 2005, but only mustered a 12th-place finish. In the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, Andretti led 58 of 90 laps and looked poised for his first victory since Sonoma in 2006, but pit stop mismanagement meant he had to come in for an extra stop, and he placed fifth. Neither Long Beach nor Kansas were as strong, and Andretti headed to Indianapolis 13th in the standings, with half as many points as leader Will Power.

Qualifying wasn't too kind to the third-generation Andretti, as 16th marked his worst career Indy starting spot. But unlike father Michael and grandfather Mario, frequent victims of the "Andretti Curse" at Indianapolis, Marco managed to keep up a pattern of alternating DNFs with podium finishes. The youngest Andretti led a lap and finished third in the race, propelling him up three spots in the points.

Andretti followed that up with another third place at Texas, behind Ryan Briscoe and teammate Danica Patrick. He qualified third and led laps early in the subsequent Iowa race, and 2010 began to look as if it would be the young Andretti's best season yet.

But a 15th place finish in that event seemed to kill, for a long time, any momentum that the No. 26 team had. The next five races were mid-pack road course runs, with no truly horrible finishes but no runs better than an eighth in Toronto. Regardless, Andretti's less-than-fantastic road course finishes only ranked him 10th in the sub-championship named after his grandfather, with less than half the points total of eventual road course champion Power.

Back on the ovals to finish the season, Andretti regained his earlier mojo at Chicagoland. Poking his nose into the lead multiple times early in the race, he stuck around until the end and scored his third and final podium of the year. Kentucky and Motegi were both so-so runs, with the team finishing sixth and 11th respectively. When all was said and done, Andretti finished seventh in the oval sub-championship.

Unfortunately for Andretti the driver and Andretti the team, the season finale at Homestead wasn't included in those standings. He qualified a subpar 16th, but patiently worked his way through the pack, leading 10 laps in the final quarter of the race and finishing seventh.

It was a strong day all around for Andretti Autosport, as three of their drivers finished in the top seven in the race and took the first three spots in the championship not occupied by the dominant drivers of Team Penske or Chip Ganassi Racing. For Marco, it was his second consecutive eighth place finish in the series' final standings, and his fourth top-10 in points since entering the championship in 2006.

With the team scoring two wins in 2010, breaking a winless drought that had extended through 2009, the expectations for next year are that all of the Andretti cars will find the winner's circle. Andretti may benefit from the possibility of the team downsizing, as teammates Tony Kanaan and Ryan Hunter-Reay currently do not have the sponsorship to run next year. A smaller, easier-to-manage team for owner Michael Andretti, and better personnel on the team's remaining cars, would likely improve Andretti's chances of scoring solid finishes and race victories in 2011.

IndyCar Season Review: Helio Castroneves

Point for point, 2010 was one of Helio Castroneves' best IZOD IndyCar Series seasons of all time.

Scoring 531 points in the series' 17 races, Castroneves took three victories to finish fourth in the series championship. It was the fourth top five in the standings that Castroneves has taken in the past five years, and it came without missing the season opener as he did last year. He also reduced his DNF count from four in 2009 to two this season, while matching his two poles from last season as well.

The season started off strong for Castroneves, as he took top-10 finishes in all four road and street course races to open the season. After teammate Will Power won in Sao Paulo and St. Petersburg, Castroneves kept up Team Penske's momentum when he scored the victory in the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. Though he was 42 points out of the lead heading into the first oval stretch, Castroneves maintained second in points at that time.

From there, things got a little less consistent. Castroneves' highlights of the second quarter of the season were his fourth career Indianapolis 500 pole and a runner-up finish at Iowa, but a DNF at Texas in a wreck with Mario Moraes didn't help his cause.

A finish on the edge of the top 10 in Watkins Glen and an accident with Vitor Meira in Toronto dropped him all the way to sixth in points heading into Edmonton, a race in which he had finished second the previous two years. Castroneves was poised to improve on that personal best until a blocking penalty dropped him to tenth in the order. A heated Castroneves lost his cool, grabbing IndyCar officials post-race in his frustration.

From there, Castroneves began to regain his stride, though it was too little too late.

115 points out of the lead with six races to go, he would have needed to finish in the top four in each of the final six races while all of his rivals struggled tremendously. A refocused Castroneves did his part, finishing no worse than sixth in the final six races, but it would not even be close to enough.

The highlights of Castroneves' late season run included consecutive wins at Kentucky and Motegi. The Kentucky win came to the surprise of most, as Ed Carpenter had been dominating the race; Castroneves used an alternate fuel strategy and low throttle levels in the race's closing laps to coast to the win as everybody else pitted. In Japan, he led 153 of the race's 200 laps, including a stretch from lap 118 to the finish.

Coming into Homestead, Castroneves had a shot at securing third place in the standings, but a fifth place finish was not enough to maintain the spot, as Scott Dixon passed him for the spot with his victory.

2010 wasn't Castroneves' finest season of all time, especially compared to his DNF-free tear in 2008, but worked out to be one of his most consistent seasons since road courses were added to the series. Though only the second-best Penske driver this year, Castroneves proved that he remains one of the series' top drivers, even after over a decade in the sport.

The Cooldown Lap: Indy Grand Prix of Alabama

(Ed's note: This feature used to be called "Morning After," but due to events out of my control, I couldn't exactly get it out in time yesterday. As such, instead of taking responsibility, I will simply change the name of the column to "The Cooldown Lap" and give myself two days from now on. I love being my own boss.)

A collection of thoughts sparked by Sunday's Indy Grand Prix of Alabama:

GOOD TO SEE: Marco Andretti contend for a victory. The series needs some strong American drivers, and with Ryan Hunter-Reay looking for sponsorship to run full-time, Graham Rahal looking for a job, and Danica Patrick suffering from Dale Earnhardt Jr. Syndrome, it looks like the youngest Andretti may have to be the one to step up. He hasn't been the same since that Indy 500 flip, that's for sure, but he's gotten more consistent over the years.

DISAPPOINTED NOT TO SEE: More variation in the top six. Besides Andretti, who fell to fifth after pitting, the rest of the top six cars were all owned by Chip Ganassi or Roger Penske. We're reverting to the domination of years past. That's bad.

BIGGEST SURPRISE: Did Mike Conway really beat Will Power out of the pits at one point? Kudos to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for that. They've taken some quantum leaps forward this year. Honorable mentions: No cars crashing out of the race, Marco's lap 15 pass on Helio, pit strategy screwing Will Power as much as it did.

LEAST SHOCKING: Takuma Sato finishing last. To be fair, though, this time he didn't have an accident, and that's a start. One of these days he'll start getting the hang of it. Honorable mentions: The "Park Milka" trend on Twitter, almost no passing, Danica Patrick at the back of the pack.

THE SIMONA REPORT: After being featured in an IndyCar video on YouTube that showed her drawing the track blindfolded, Simona de Silvestro finished 21st at Barber after being spun with five laps to go. She now ranks 20th in points. For the record, Simona's blindfold trick is cool but not totally unique - if you've ever watched DTM broadcasts on the Speed Channel, often times they will show a driver in the series analyzing the track with a blindfold. To her credit, though, Simona's one of the most accurate I've ever seen.

NEXT YEAR'S RACE: ...needs to feature a lot more passing, especially up front. I don't care how beautiful Barber Motorsports Park is - I think we've all gotten over that. We don't want a Formula 1 event every year.

IndyCar Race Review: Indy Grand Prix of Alabama

Helio Castroneves took the checkers in the inaugural Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, for his first IZOD IndyCar Series win in 14 starts. It was Castroneves' 15th career IZOD IndyCar Series victory and 21st overall in American open-wheel racing. It was also the third consecutive win for Team Penske, which scored the other two with teammate Will Power.

Helio's first win of the year was never a certainty, however, as he did not hold the lead until late in the race. In fact, Marco Andretti held the point for the majority of the event, and Power, strong as his car was, led in the early stages.

Power and Mike Conway started on the front row. The start was clean, save for Scott Dixon's early jump, as was much of the race. Drivers found the new racetrack to have very few passing zones, and only the most daring were able to perform solid overtakes.

As such, many felt that an alternate pit strategy could help facilitate a solid run. Many drivers were banking on a race with a lot of long green flag runs, setting up whoever had enough fuel to go to the end to take victory. Drivers who decided to pit early included Alex Tagliani and Dan Wheldon.

In another stroke of bad luck for Takuma Sato, his car lost power early in the race. The KV Racing Technology crew managed to get him going again, however, and returned him to the race 21 laps down. Sato lost another lap before the finish, but at least salvaged a race with the car completely intact.

Sato was the only driver to finish more than four laps down, however. In fact, nobody crashed out of the event, though Milka Duno and Hideki Mutoh found themselves involved in off-track excursions, and Simona de Silvestro was turned around late in the race.

Under the Sato caution, Power, Conway, and many of the other leaders pit, facilitating a changing of the guard at the front of the field. The two pit again on lap 42, with Conway taking on the red alternate tires and beating Power out of the pits. Their pit strategy, however, got them caught behind a lot of cars for much of the race, and neither were really factors in the finish.

Marco Andretti took the lead after a daring move on Helio Castroneves and held on for an extended period of time. The triumvirate of Andretti, Castroneves, and Scott Dixon maintained their positions for a while, turning the race into a Formula 1-esque parade. Dario Franchitti settled in fourth, while Power pushed his way up to fifth. It appeared that Andretti could win his first race since 2006, as he was in the lead for a race-high 58 out of 90 laps.

But Andretti had to pit with eight laps to go, falling to fifth and handing the lead to Helio as Dixon attempted to cut the interval. But the lapped car of Rafa Matos appeared to impede Dixon's progress, until de Silvestro's spin and subsequent full-course caution with five laps to go bunched the field again.

Castroneves and Dixon broke away from the pack on the restart, but the Iceman was unable to catch the Spiderman.

Penske and Ganassi domination, while uncertain early on, ended up ruling the day, as Andretti was the only driver outside the top six not to drive for the series' top two teams. Andretti Autosport and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing each had two cars in the top 10, while the 10th and final spot was filled by Tagliani and the young but formidable FAZZT Race Team.

Power maintains his points lead, with 136 points, and a 32 marker advantage over teammate Castroneves. Franchitti is third with 94, Justin Wilson holds fourth with 85, and Dixon is fifth with 80.

Next weekend, the series heads to southern California for the prestigious Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. Power won the event in 2008, the final time it was held under Champ Car regulations. Last year, he finished second to Franchitti.

Twittography: Indy Grand Prix of Alabama

Here are some of the photos taken by IndyCar drivers and teams and posted to Twitter during race day at the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.

Plowey - New helmet for the weekend
AJFoytRacing - Vitor Meira signing autographs
Plowey - Lunch
IndyCarNation - Hello, beautiful
SarahFisher67 - Graham Rahal signing autographs
IndyCarNation - Liza Markle and Davey Hamilton in the pace car
ssaavedra29 - Helmet techs
IndyCarNation - Pace cars on track
DRRIndyCar - Mike Conway and Justin Wilson talking to VIPs in the paddock
FollowAndretti - Indy Lights driver intros
IndyCarNation - Charles Barkley in the KV Racing Technology garage
FollowAndretti - Martin Plowman's Lights car
FollowAndretti - Tony Kanaan and Michael Andretti monitoring the Lights race
RyanBriscoe6 - Meet Charles Barkley
IndyCarNation - Bertrand Baguette
AJFoytRacing - Vitor interview
IndyCarNation - Backstage at driver intros
NicoleMBriscoe - Nicole's in the pits with the Team Penske boys
curtcavin - Dario's car
curtcavin - Team Penske
IndyCarNation - Above the track
IndyCarNation - Look at all these race fans!
IndyCarNation - Helio in the winner's circle
IndyCarNation - The podium
IndyCarNation - The winning Penske crew

IndyCar Race Preview: Indy Grand Prix of Alabama

Round three of the 2010 IZOD IndyCar Series season takes us to the beautiful Barber Motorsports Park, site of IndyCar preseason testing and the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama. The series hasn't actually raced here before, so all we have to go off of in picking the race is those preseason testing results, momentum from the season's first two races, and this weekend's practice and qualifying charts.

They all scream one name: Will Power.

The Aussie has paced the field all year, with no sign of stopping now. Power has a chance to become the first driver to win the first three races of an open-wheel season under Indy Racing League sanctioning if he can win from the pole at Barber. The last time anybody achieved such a feat in another series came in 2006, when Sebastien Bourdais did it in Champ Car.

But despite our throwing our hands up in the air and conceding the win to Power before the race even starts, plenty of other drivers and teams in the field will have a say in the finish. In Firestone Fast Six qualifying, five teams were represented (Team Penske being the only one with two cars in the top six). Among the biggest surprises was Mike Conway, one of last year's backmarkers, who earned his first career front row start. He was among the top five in every qualifying session in which he took part, and had the fifth fastest time in warm up.

Another driver looking to surprise will be Takuma Sato, starting sixth. Sato was generally fast during preseason testing, and kept his car towards the front of the pack in qualifying. Sato was second in his group in the first session and fifth in the second session.

There are five rookies in the field, with Sato the highest-qualifying of them all. The lowest will be Bertrand Baguette, starting last due to his time being the slowest in his initial qualifying group. Baguette, however, contributes to one of the tightest IndyCar fields in years, as his lap is only about 1.3 seconds off of Conway's lap in P2. (Power, of course, is half a second faster than everybody.)

In Firestone Indy Lights, don't be surprised if J.K. Vernay wins his second consecutive race in two career starts. Vernay, who won in his debut two weeks ago at St. Petersburg, scored the pole position at Barber as well.

Baguette Makes Conquest Belgium's National Team

Conquest Racing, in its fourth year of IZOD IndyCar Series competition, officially announced today that they will add a second car for 15 races in this year's season, starting with the Indy Grand Prix of Alabama on April 11. The driver will be Belgian Bertrand Baguette, the 2009 Formula Renault 3.5 champion, who tested for two Formula 1 teams this offseason, and the car will likely carry No. 36.

More significantly, the Royal Automobile Club of Belgium, that country's motorsports governing body, will back the team, creating a true Belgian national team in the IndyCar Series. Team owner Eric Bachelart, a former open-wheel racer himself, calls Belgium home.

Bachelart has pushed for a Belgian driver in his cars before - he sent countryman Jan Heylen to the series' winter meetings with the intent of fielding him in a car this season, but that deal did not come to fruition. The team was briefly rumored to be a two car, all-Brazilian pay-driver team this season, and to have signed Tomas Scheckter, but neither of those deals worked out, either. Brazilian Mario Romancini drove for the team in Sao Paulo and will campaign the team's No. 34 car for the full season.

Originally, the rumors suggested that Baguette would drive a second car for the team in Indianapolis only, similar to how the team fielded a one-off car for Bruno Junqueira last year.

Baguette comes to IndyCar off of a majestic Formula Renault season in which he won the championship by an incredible 57 points. He didn't win a race until the sixth round of the series, sweeping the doubleheader, but won three more races over the next three rounds to secure victory. Baguette only failed to finish one race all season, and that was the only event in which he did not score points. His worst finish otherwise was eighth place, enough to score points in the series, which follows a similar points system to the former Formula 1 structure.

Baguette will attend this weekend's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg in order to familiarize himself with the team and the cars, but will likely not take part in any events behind the wheel.