Photo: What the field saw for most of the last four races.

A few More items to complete the books on 2023:

McLaren, Andretti Lack Consitency

Entering the season, Ganassi, Team Penske, Andretti Autosport, and Arrow McLaren were considered the Big Four teams. It turns out this year was the year of the Big Two. Both McLaren and Andretti were inconsistent, each having flashes of greatness, but except for Kyle Kirkwood’s two wins, neither team put a full race together.

Arrow Mclaren’s entire season seemed to deflate at St. Pete, when Pato O’Ward’s engine had a small hiccup as he approached the white flag. The team seemed to lose any momentum they had. How different would the championship battle look if O’Ward had won the season opener? he was in a position to win at Texas, Indianapolis, and Laguna Seca. Yellow and red flags appeared to stymie his chances. each time. Felix Rosenquist earned two poles, at Texas and Laguna Seca, but he faded quickly at both races. Alexander Rossi had a decent year as a driver moving to a new team, and he should be stronger in 2024.

Kirkwood’s two wins were the highlight of a difficult season for Andretti. Their top three drivers- Romin Grosjean, Colton Herta, and Kirkwood- won a combined five pokes. Like Mclaren, poles were not converted to race wins. Herta seemed especially snake bitten, either penalties or bad pit stops taking him out of contention. Kirkwood and Grosjean were inconsistent. The addition of Marcus Ericsson should improve the team’s performance in 2024.

Race Control

The theme of this post is inconsistency. Throughout most of the season, I had no idea what race control was doing. Delayed yellow flags so everyone could pit, allowing cars to get in the pits before throwing the yellow, unnecessary red flags (see Indianapolis 500) made it very confusing to know the situation.

The delayed yellow flag is a dangerous precedent. I guess they are not going to change it until a car runs into the disabled machine. This situation is completely avoidable by throwing the yellow immediately. Will someone’s race be ruined? Maybe. It’s called the breaks of the game.

I will not repeat my full red flag rant again, but I will say red flags are for safety, not to create entertainment. I’ll stop here before this column becomes six pages long.

My hope is that over the off season race control refines procedures for cautions abn starts and restarts. Some green flags should have been called off this season. Sunday’s start was the most glaring example. A rethink of restart zones at certain tracks is also in order.

A Huge Thank You

I want to thank everybody who took time to read this little post and followed along all season. It was fun to cover in spite of the medical issue I incurred mid season. I am fine now.

My season is not quite done. I will be on site with coverage of the Battle on the Bricks IMSA race at IMS this weekend. It will be my first time covering this series, and I’m looking forward to it.

I will be here all winter and I have several stories planned, so please come back in the coming months.