IndyCar scrambling to save history, fill 33rd car for Indy 500 with few options left

For decades, it’s been known as the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, but as we inch closer to the start of practice for the 2022 Indianapolis 500, nearly two weeks from open testing, a last-minute, cobbled-together ride may not be enough to persuade those on the sidelines to join the party.

For more than two months, the 500 grid has sat at 32 cars, following A.J. Foyt Racing’s formal announcement Jan. 17 of running a third full-time car. The grid reached 30 in mid-December, at a time when it seemed as if Honda and Chevy’s strict 18-engine apiece limit would cap things, rather than scarcity of crew, resources and interest.

SPORTS NEWSLETTER: Sign up now for daily updates sent to your inbox

INDYCAR WINNERS, LOSERS FROM TEXAS:: Penske, Ganassi leave on a high; Andretti, Rahal, AMSP don't

Across the IndyCar paddock, team and manufacturer principals can’t imagine reaching Practice No. 1 May 17 without at least one more car confirmed, and yet are thoroughly stumped as to where it might come from. Only twice since World War II has the 500 run without exactly 33 cars on the grid – and both times (1997 and 1979) it was because the field had been temporarily expanded to 35.

Only once while 85-year-old series owner Roger Penske has been alive has the Indy 500 starting command been given with fewer than 33 cars on the grid (1947, 30 cars). Like ‘Back Home Again in Indiana’, the flyover, ‘Taps’ and a celebratory milk bath, the Indy 500’s 11 rows of three cars have long been a sacred cornerstone to the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend in Speedway.

In recent years, work’s been done behind the scenes by series decision makers to ensure such a quandary could be avoided – most recently in the COVID-19-delayed race when DragonSpeed was helped to the finish line as entry No. 33 two weeks from the green flag. Lately, series president Jay Frye has fervently been putting in such work, but his calls haven’t been met with as much positivity as one might hope.

“Why are we having these conversations in the end of March, rather than November?” quipped one prospective team owner, summarizing their response to a recent conversation with Frye. “It’s not that we’re ungrateful to be there, but this last-minute scramble isn’t good for anybody.”

The reason? Those sitting on the fringes of the sport are on their way in – not out. In particular, Don Cusick and Beth Paretta have visions of longevity in the sport for their futures. A year ago, their teams (Cusick’s partnered entry with Andretti Autosport and Beth’s Paretta Austosport with a Team Penske technical alliance) qualified 28th and 33rd, respectively, and finished 33rd and 31st. As team owners who see themselves running, at-minimum, part-time IndyCar schedules in 2023 (meaning more than just the 500) or potentially full-time, delivering another poor Indy 500 result to the investors who would help make those dreams possible might hurt more than not showing up at all.

They’re up against a remarkably historic field that includes 13 total 500 victories, 13 series titles and 14 Indy 500 pole starts.

“These top programs are so well-resourced,” one team owner told IndyStar, “that it would be like bringing a rock to a knife fight.”

It’s not the field’s only problem, either.

Honda's 'something special' sputters out

In recent weeks, much of the paddock whispers concerning the final spot on the entry list have involved Honda’s 18th and final engine and two-time 500 starter Katherine Legge. The 41-year-old is a well-accomplished sportscar driver with a longstanding relationship with Honda, for whom she made her most recent 500 start with in 2013. Legge finished 26th with what eventually became Arrow McLaren SP.

Since, she’s garnered nearly a dozen IMSA podiums in the GTD class, and she’s annually on lists of prospective Indy 500 drivers who, if they could find the right pairing, might really be able to make a Month of May splash.

For a while early this spring, it felt as if the pieces had finally fallen into place. According to multiple paddock sources, Legge, with the help of Honda, was in talks with James Sullivan and Jimmy Vasser (of Vasser-Sullivan Racing, who temporarily pulled out of full-time IndyCar competition last fall) to procure both the vacant Dallara chassis Ed Jones drove a year ago and the crew to run it.

Late last week, though, Legge was told VSR would have to pass. Multiple sources told IndyStar the team has been tabbed by Toyota to prep a GT car entry for the SRO series for several summer races – the first of which falls two weeks after the 500. Combined with less-than-stellar results to start the 2022 IMSA season, where they run two full-time cars in GTD and GTD Pro, it’s believed Vasser and Sullivan felt their employees had too much on their plates to take on an Indy 500 project.

Unfortunately for Legge, much of the funding that had been gathered and tied specifically to that entry was then lost. She’s now left with Honda’s remaining engine lease, and she might very well be able to persuade  VSR to loan her their spare car with proper funding, but there’s seemingly nowhere for her to run it. Andretti Autosport (5 cars), Chip Ganassi Racing (5), Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (3) and Meyer Shank Racing (2) have all said they’re staying put at their current team sizes, with Dale Coyne Racing believed by many in the paddock to be reluctant to balloon past two cars.

Some on the Honda side have said privately they wouldn’t have minded running an extra car, but they either were too slim on resources or were told at the time of their peak interest by Honda there wasn’t another engine lease to spare. For months, the engine manufacturer has been telling its teams that the car and team for its final lease would have to be “something special.”

Barring a Hail Mary from Legge, just over 50 days until the green flag is hardly time the cultivate the type of storyline Paretta and Simona De Silvestro did a year ago that transcended the sports landscape and quickly became the biggest pre-race headline grabber.

Instead, Vasser-Sullivan’s decision all but guarantees Honda will enter 17 cars come May, equaling their total from a year ago when 35 entries jockeyed for 33 spots. With that, all eyes now shift to Chevy, which at the moment has shrunk by three entries compared to 2021.

How Chevy went from 18 cars in '21 to 15 in '22

How did we get to this point, this Chevy-centric shrinking of the Indy 500 field? Two teams expanded year-over-year, with Dreyer and Reinbold Racing jumping back up to two-car status, while Juncos Hollinger Racing absorbed the assets of Carlin, a one-car team taking over for another.

But alongside it, A.J. Foyt Racing elected to scale back from four 500 entries to three after one of its cars, driven by Charlie Kimball, failed to make the field of 33 a year ago. Simultaneously, Team Penske has since added a sportscar partnership with Porsche in the brand-new LMDh class in both IMSA and WEC for 2023. Not only did it play into Roger Penske and Tim Cindric’s decision to scale back from four full-time IndyCar programs to three this season, but Penske no longer has the personnel available that Paretta utilized in her technical alliance a year ago.

She currently holds a Chevy engine lease, has funding in place, has the ability to secure a car one way or another and has the handful of female first-time IndyCar crew members who made up a majority of her team a year ago. De Silvestro, a six-time Indy 500 starter, continues to wait in the wings, should a ride come together, but Paretta still lacks the multitude of strategy and engineering brains that make an entry remotely competitive.

“We’ve talked to Beth consistently,” Roger Penske told IndyStar in an exclusive interview last race weekend at Texas. “She knew (Penske Entertainment’s Race for Equality and Change initiative) was for one year. “I know she’s trying to make a decision…to determine if she comes to the 500, or if it’s too late. That would be a disappointment for me.”

Without Penske budging and repurposing some of his team members who are deep in sportscar mode to help Paretta Autosport for the month of May, it’s virtually certain we won’t see her team back on the grid at IMS this May. Last year, that technical partnership was formally announced in January and had more than four months of hard work put into trying to make it successful. Yes, the familiarity is there that would make things fairly turnkey for a late announcement – down to still having De Silvestro’s seat on a shelf at the Team Penske shop – but any other option would potentially risk the team’s future with a bad showing.

The final hopes to reach 11 rows of 3

What we’re left with perhaps is only marginally more promising. Throckmorton’s Top Gun Racing continues to be embroiled in legal proceedings to decide who has use of the No. 75 Dallara chassis and backup tub the team and RC Enerson failed to qualify in last year’s race. It’s believed the Enerson family invested a heavy deal in the team a year ago to help get it off the ground last-minute without any major primary sponsors – largely in helping procure the big-ticket items from Dallara.

TGR is still working on securing major sponsorship this year in hopes of running, but they’re said to need just under $2 million that would both fund them in May and be able to purchase outright full ownership of the car and spare tub in question. With Enerson out of the picture from a driver standpoint, the team has looked toward other series veterans, including Kimball, but as each day passes, it looks increasingly unlikely that last year’s hopeful Cinderella story will be able to make another run at it in 2022.

The only other apparent hope lies with Stefan Wilson and Cusick, the latter of which told IndyStar last week they were still pressing along and hopeful a deal would finally fall into place, having switched to the Chevy camp last-minute to seek out an opportunity. The pairing has been set on funding for this year’s 500 since mid-last year and was involved in talks for larger-scale rides such as Conor Daly’s seat at Ed Carpenter Racing in the fall.

But ultimately, this year’s lack of one-off opportunities has kept them waiting and wondering. Alongside 26 full-time entries, nearly all the other cars were ones you could have accounted for the day after last year’s 500. They’re filled by Juan Pablo Montoya (AMSP), Ed Carpenter (ECR), Marco Andretti (Andretti Autosport) and Tony Kanaan (CGR), along with the only true one-off team, Dreyer and Reinbold Racing’s two-car effort (Sage Karam and Santino Ferrucci).

And Cusick and Wilson have said all along they don’t want to end up forced into ride that cruises along at the back of the field all month. A year ago, their car was announced once the calendar had flipped to May. Wilson’s early exit from the race, spinning entering pitlane for his first stop on cold brakes, signified the knife’s edge his program had been running on all spring just to land a ride. A year later, there’s both a deep desire for redemption and a worry that rushing things could hinder their process long-term.

The most likely Chevy culprits to run an extra car – Larry Foyt, Ricardo Juncos and Penske – have all been adamant in recent weeks they want to stay at their current makeup. The only change, it appears, may come in how much IndyCar’s willing to sweeten the deal. Cusick and Wilson would still need the full team package: an engine lease, a primary and backup car and personnel – the latter which is said to be the most precious commodity in racing in 2022.

It may all come down to this: does a team like Juncos, who stockpiled assets from Carlin this fall, step outside its well-forecasted future plans last-minute for the greater good of Indy 500 history?

At Texas, Penske affirmed the series is working toward a solution, but he also made clear they’re not prepared to go to extreme lengths to save the historic grid simply for appearances' sake. With a higher 500 purse, increased Leaders Circle payouts, continued IMS infrastructure changes and an increased race promoting role in 2022 after spending two years saving the series from a pandemic, Penske’s IndyCar can only do so much.

“It’ll be what it is,” he said. “We’ll have a race. Commercially, (having 33 cars or not) doesn’t make any difference. From a historic standpoint, it probably has some impact, but the way we had the race last year and the excitement with Helio winning and now him going for his fifth, those are the things we really need to focus on.

“We’d like to have 33. We want to have 33 cars, and we’ll do whatever we can that’s reasonable and realistic to make it happen.”

Email IndyStar motor sports reporter Nathan Brown at nlbrown@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter: @By_NathanBrown.