IndyCar Rookies 2022 | Motorsport | Is It Fast

The 2022 IndyCar season got underway a couple of weekends ago.

Set against the sea front background of St. Petersburg, Florida, the twenty-six-car grid got ready for its first of seventeen races.

It all looked like a rather nice set-up and I was eagerly looking forward to getting stuck into this species of motor racing.

Having roughly followed IndyCar for the last couple of years, this would be the first race that I had actually watched from start to finish.

After having gotten back into Formula E earlier this year and with the F1 season not underway yet, it seemed like the perfect time to see what all the IndyCar fuss was about once and for all.

To my joy, there are way more drivers on the 2022 IndyCar grid that I know of which certainly helped me to invest in the first race of the season. Romain Grosjean, Marcus Ericsson and Takuma Sato I knew from their time in F1.

Callum Ilott and Christian Lungaard should have also been in that list but haven’t been that lucky yet. Instead. they come to IndyCar from Formula 2 – which is itself an excellent racing series.

Then there’s Tatiana Calderon who I think everyone just knows at this point and it’s illegal not to. Finally there’s Dalton Kellett who I knew from interviewing for my own Podcast Channel, On the Kerbs, last year. Everyone else was essentially new to me, even if I’d heard of them in passing, such as Pato O’Ward and Scott Dixon.

The cars too looked interesting, especially with their protective screens. The liveries were quite pretty too for the most part, even if it made it a little tricky to keep track of who everyone was at times during the race.

The street circuit nature of the course also appealed to me. Having come off the back of Formula 1 and Formula E though, street circuits can easily make for great races or rather lacklustre ones.

So which was it to be for my first IndyCar race?

Diplomatically speaking, it was a bit of a mix. The 100 laps of St. Petersburg did feel to drag on at times I have to say.

There was some good action at times with some crafty overtakes, especially in a few places I wasn’t expecting them. Bit if you were in the middle part of the track, overtakes were few and far between.

Grosjean and Herta looked like they were having fun on track and admittedly, the last ten or so laps of the race were more of what I’d been hoping for. It’s just a shame it took so long to get to that point.

Scott McLaughlin and Alex Palou (defending IndyCar Champion) were battling it out for the race win right down to the wire – and this was definitely the saving grace of the race for me. Spoilers but McLaughlin won in the end and celebrated with a Daniel Ricciardo inspired shooey which was a nice touch.

I’m glad that this particular battle happened because as a new fan, it teased that there was still potential for IndyCar and that maybe I should give up on it as quickly as I’d taken an interest in it.

A large part of my disappointment with the race though came from the American coverage.

Whilst the Americans may be used to it, as a Brit, the constant interruptions for ad breaks (even with a small silent box in the corner of the screen still following the race) really took me out of the race and caring less about it. If any of the TV channels in the UK tried pulling that kind of stunt, there’d be uproar.

If IndyCar wants to get new fans, especially from an international audience then some accommodations need to be made on this front I think.

The points system is also something I have an issue with. Everyone gets points. Even if you finish last. What’s that about? Sure, on the one hand it has the potential of keeping more drivers in the hunt for the Championship over the season.

But on the other hand, it very much feels like the cringey primary school idea of everyone getting a participation medal. It makes it a little tricker to see which drivers are good and which ones are great which becomes potentially problematic when you want to bring new drivers into the sport ahead of a new season.

Then you also get a led a lap of the race and you get two points if you led the most race laps. Maybe it’s just me but that also feels a bit unnecessary and comes across as a way to try and make the race/championship more exciting because of the lack of on track action.

Overall then, I’m going to stick with IndyCar for this season so that I can have some better reference points for the future and I have to believe that not all of the races will be like this.

Whilst there were enjoyable parts, I wonder if I’d be as invested if the drivers that I knew from elsewhere weren’t in it.

For me IndyCar has a lot of potential and I’m hoping that like a good HBO or Netflix show, it’ll turn into a slow burn across the season and then come good by the end. I just hope that that show doesn’t end up being Game of Thrones.

Author: Thiemo Albers-Daly