As the Wheel Turns: IndyCar’s Current Soap Opera

The NTT INDYCAR SERIES season is hitting its halfway point, but the machinations off-track are rapidly eclipsing some of the most exciting on-track action the series has seen in recent years. With a full-time and expanding cast of teams and drivers in the 2022 campaign, the emphasis has changed to silly season – already. It almost feels and sounds like a soap opera… As the Wheel Turns, perhaps?

First came the announcement that Felix Rosenqvist would be staying with McLaren for next year, but the series and car the Swede will be driving is still unconfirmed. Next, McLaren Racing turned up the testing temps when it exercised the opportunity to test Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta in prior-season car testing, where previous years’ Formula One cars are used to test drivers that have not yet driven an F1 car. Herta tested the 2021 McLaren MCL35M at Portimao, Portugal this week and returns to INDYCAR action at Toronto this weekend with that exciting two-day test under his belt.

Then, early on Tuesday afternoon, July 12th, Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) produced a release to Twitter that announced it had exercised its option for 2021 INDYCAR champion Alex Palou for the 2023 season, after the Spaniard brought Ganassi his 14th driver’s title in the series. There were quotes from team owner Ganassi and from the driver in this release.

Chip Ganassi has all his drivers on single-year contracts; it’s how he’s always done business and likely always will. But just hours after his group produced this release, Palou reciprocated by stating he’d not been party to the release and did not intend to honor the third-year commitment to CGR. for “personal reasons,” the driver said.

The news grew Alice in Wonderland-like: curiouser and curiouser. McLaren Racing then proclaimed that IT had signed Palou to a 2023 contract. The statement came from McLaren Racing, not Arrow McLaren SP, which is the INDYCAR arm of McLaren’s large, four-series reach. The statement by McLaren was very ambiguous: “Alongside his racing duties next year, Palou will also test with the McLaren F1 Team as part of its 2021 MCL35M F1 car testing program with fellow drivers Pato O’Ward and Colton Herta.”

All this occurred as teams, cars and drivers headed north of the US border for Toronto in Canada’s Ontario province. INDYCAR hasn’t been able to visit this Canadian city, one of its regular sites since the CART years and the place where Michael Andretti had his most success as a driver. It was also the site where, not even a year after his near-fatal accident, Alessandro Zanardi returned to the tour that had brought him success and, even without use of his legs, climbed the start stand to begin the 2002 race.

There’s a lot of he said/he said involved here, but we do know that, despite the questions about his future with CGR, Palou will be in the No. 10 NTT Data Honda this weekend, working with Chip Ganassi Racing. He likely won’t be part of any – any – engineering discussions from here to the close of the season if, in fact, Ganassi wants to keep him around.

There have been discussions about a replacement driver – Ganassi’s IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar championship prototype effort features Sebastien Bourdais, who has plenty of INDYCAR experience and is a four-time INDYCAR champion. Ganassi also has former INDYCAR and Indianapolis 500 champion Ryan Hunter-Reay in his stable. Neither of them had other obligations for the weekend, but team spokesmen said that Palou would drive in the 85-lap Toronto race.

After all the announcements were made, it’s clear the atmosphere in the INDYCAR paddock will be, um, different at Toronto and in the remaining seven events on the calendar. How this will play out is anyone’s guess. No doubt it’ll be interesting.