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[h=2]INDYCAR Ed Carpenter[/h] Thursday, 06 October 2016


Marshall pruett & Robin Miller / Images by IMS Phot & Lat

Just when you thought that the Verizon IndyCar Series had run out of ways to surprise, 2016 came along. The championship was won by a guy who looked all at sea 12 months earlier, his closest rival didn't even participate in the first race, and the winner of the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 was a recent F1 refugee who apparently figured out how to make a car work without fuel.


ED CARPENTER
NO. 20 ED CARPENTER RACING CHEVROLET
Preseason hopes: "I think we all felt pretty confident at the end of 2015, and we've had a really good off-season as well. What would represent a good season this year? Winning Indy."
2016 Best result: 18th (Iowa, Texas)
2016 Championship position: 25th (67 points from six starts)

Carpenter attributed his struggles in 2015 to an engineering problem, but went into this year confident that it had been solved. So what was going on this time around?

MILLER: Hard to pinpoint, He and engineer Matt Barnes have always clicked so that's not the problem, and they raced better in 2016 than they did in 2015 - they just didn't have any results to show for it. Between crashes and mechanical failures, it was a pretty frustrating season for one side of the ECR operation.

PRUETT: I wish I knew. Carpenter is an important part of IndyCar's oval promotion package, a Midwest hero, and has found himself in the desirable role of open-wheel's anti-hero – an underdog ready to topple the Ganassis and Penskes. In five oval races this year, Ed failed to finish better than 18th. He was 17th or worse at four of six ovals in 2015. It's either a worrying trend or an epic streak of bad luck, and his output in 2017 will answer whether it was one or the other.
It's only a couple of years ago that Carpenter was the guy to beat anytime the series went to an oval. Now, it's more than a year since he has finished a race higher than 17th. Is his current slide just a blip?

MILLER: When you consider that he was running in the Top 5 at Phoenix and was one of the fastest cars at Texas before crashing out of both races, it's not like he still doesn't have speed. His Indy 500 qualifying was baffling for a two-time pole-sitter (he started 20th), especially since his teammate started second and was one of the quickest cars in the race, but I think it was an anomaly.
Is it possible that Carpenter was somehow compromised by the team's increasing focus on Newgarden?

MILLER: Absolutely, I think his focus and effort was 1000 percent on JoNew and trying everything he could to keep him happy and on the Fuzzy's team past 2016. ECR has become one of the best teams in the paddock in every discipline and finding sponsors, keeping the ones you've got happy and giving American drivers a shot is a lot of work. But I think driving is about the only relaxation Ed gets anymore.
PRUETT: Carpenter and race engineer Matt Barnes have plenty of experience working together, had the same engine and aero package as Newgarden, and we can safely assume both cars were completely equal in terms of development. He was less than stellar in 2015, so I view 2016 as more of a continuation of the bad than a change in focus that delivered something we hadn't seen the year before.

I could be wrong, but I'm beginning to wonder if the days of an IndyCar driver being able to jump in, drive on an infrequent basis, and put forth a competitive effort has passed. Especially when the Dallara DW12 is no longer a mystery, aero kits (on the Chevy side) are heavily refined, and drivers are left to find the smallest advantages to separate themselves from their rivals.

The month of May is the obvious exception; two weeks of practice is more than enough time to get settled and locked into the right mental space, but even Ed was adrift this year while Josef qualified second and finished third. Elsewhere, with less time to drown out the rest of the world and focus solely on perfecting the car, I would imagine it's a challenge to match the mindset of a Castroneves or Dixon who are tuned into all the little aspects - chassis setup, aero setup, tire degradation - that make the difference between first and fifteenth.

Again, I could be wrong, but being dropped into an oval race after weeks of being cold while the animals fighting for a championship are on fire and in the groove seems like a recipe for disappointment at this point in time.
Should he consider stepping down to a third, Indy-only car?
MILLER: Let's not kid ourselves, it gets tougher and tougher to run a handful of races because the competition keeps getting better and deeper. Ed is 35 and I think the Indy 500-only scenario is still a couple of years away, but I do believe if he found the right driver/sponsor to bolt in the No.20 car, he would step aside. He's middle-aged for an IndyCar driver - but he's just a kid in terms of an IndyCar owner, and he plans to be around a long time.

PRUETT: Only if it's something he wants to do, and it won't start the clock on ECR withdrawing from the series. Ed's team has become a serious player in the paddock; with Newgarden installed, they've become a force to reckon with at every round. If Ed can be happy as a once-a-year driver, his sponsors sign off on it, and it won't lead to losing interest in keeping ECR afloat, maybe it's worth considering.

Other than winning the Indy 500, he doesn't have anything left to prove. At the same time, Ed being out of the car (except for Indy) doesn't help the series when it visits the ovals where he's earned a solid following. The best we can hope for is a complete turnaround in 2017 because I'm not convinced his best days are behind him.