"I do feel like we can go for a championship next season," says AJ Foyt Racing IndyCar driver Santino Ferrucci, an opinion that is likely to be very divisive.
Let's go back to the extremely obvious destination of 2002 to start assessing this claim...Bear with us.
Spider-Man is top of the cinema box office, How you remind me by Nickelback is the biggest song of the year, and two of the four drivers who raced McLaren's #6 IndyCar in 2024 weren't yet born.
But there's a wider, more important aim behind those observations than making myself and others feel old at the distance of a year that feels like it was yesterday to some, but is pre-historic to others.
It was the last year the IndyCar title was won by a team other than Andretti, Ganassi or Penske - at least if you take IRL as the logical predecessor to IndyCar, rather than Champ Car.
Coincidentally, 2002 was also the last time a Foyt driver had finished in the top 10 in the championship before this season. And now Ferrucci says he and his team are coming for it all.
After finishing 19th in 2023, Ferrucci jumped to ninth this year and had a strong and consistent season in which he also bagged his first pole position, on the Portland road course.
On the ovals, Ferrucci had the third-best average finish of anyone this year, and in general he's clearly been much more consistent.
But Ferrucci - who mentioned fighting for a championship multiple times in an interview with media including The Race before the Nashville finale - says consistency is the main thing he and Foyt can improve on still.
"Larry [Foyt, team owner] has built such an incredible team," says Ferrucci. "All the mechanics are gelling much more this year. Engineering staff's incredible. It's just the consistency.
"I've tossed away a handful of top fives, as a team we've missed out on a couple as well.
"Just coming back and just fixing those little mistakes that require perfection, I think we'll be able to win a championship, or at least fight in the top three for one.
"So it's more so just continuing to build on what we're building.
"It's a huge team sport. It's been a huge effort. We're super excited. I know Larry's happy. I'm happy. Just can't wait to see where it goes."
Is he deluded to suggest Foyt could fight for the championship or even a top five in the standings next year? Or are Ferrucci and the team being unfairly underestimated by even asking that question? Let’s assess the arguments that support and undermine his claim.
For: The team is on a roll
Since Foyt signed engineer Michael Cannon for 2023, the team has made huge gains. Other key hires have followed - including gearbox ace Rick Pearson - and Cannon's implemented a systematic plan for improvement.
When he came in he knew he couldn't fix everything right away. So he focused on the Indianapolis 500 and it got a top-three finish there with Ferrucci that year.
For the rest of 2023 and into 2024 the goal was to improve on road and street circuits and Ferrucci's Portland pole points to that being achieved - although Foyt was still behind on circuits versus some of the people that Ferrucci beat in the championship.
But the point is that, since Cannon came in, there's been steady growth. Larry Foyt has continued to invest and to find investors, and has done so much to float this programme with what it needs to improve.
Against: Dearth of top fives
I'm sorry, but I don't think you can make a sensible claim to fight for a title when you have two top-five finishes over the season - both of which came in a double-header at the same track.
For context, champion Alex Palou scored 14 top fives in 17 races this year. He had more top fives than Ferrucci had top 10s.
It's one thing making a step forwards. But such a leap in the space of one year would be miracle territory.
Against: Foyt hasn't won in this era
Taking into account Ferrucci needing to score seven times as many top fives to match Palou's 2024 tally, let's use Andretti driver Kyle Kirkwood as an example of why winning - something Foyt hasn't done since 2013 - is so important.
The IndyCar points system offers 50 points for a win with a huge gap down to 30 for fifth. Whereas the difference in F1 is only seven between a win (25 points) and second (18 points).
The IndyCar points system rewards wins.
Kirkwood had the fourth-best average finish in IndyCar this year. But he didn't win any races and finished seventh overall, 122 points behind Palou. Ferrucci, for reference, was another 53 points behind.
It's plausible that Ferrucci/Foyt could win a race because an underdog almost always does every season. But doing it twice, which is likely the least you need for a title, just feels like too big a step to make for a team that had two top fives this year.
For: It's got Penske
Perhaps the biggest reason that Foyt has turned the ship around is that it signed a technical partnership with Team Penske for 2024, giving it access to dampers and other key equipment and information. Ferrucci's engineer James Schnabel is also on loan from Penske.
If you can't beat them, get supplied by them, as the famous (adjusted) saying goes.
For: Malukas is a good signing
Despite heading into his fourth year in IndyCar, 2025 Foyt signing David Malukas is not only talented but has raced for three different teams in that period and has amassed a huge amount of knowledge.
Ovals are more often cited as Malukas’s biggest strength but the majority would also most likely say that Malukas is better than Ferrucci on road courses, even if he doesn't have a pole on one yet.
But Malukas is clearly a top talent and qualified very, very well for Meyer Shank this year. That will be an asset in an area Foyt has struggled.
Generally, you'd expect his arrival to lift the level of the team exponentially. Even just in the area of quality data to work off next year.
Against: The drivers have too much to prove
While both drivers are talented, both are going to be motivated to crush the other in pursuit of their longer-term goals.
Ferrucci hasn't had a top team-mate during his time at Foyt, and beating Malukas would do a lot for his reputation.
We know Malukas's end goal is to end up with a top team. Many have pointed to Malukas potentially signing here because the team has a link with Penske and suggested he could end up there in the future, possibly when Will Power retires.
But he likely won't get a move like that if he doesn't come out clearly ahead of Ferrucci.
I'm not suggesting either of them won't be team players and work towards helping Foyt. But each needs to beat the other to succeed in their long-term ambitions.
That could inspire the two to improve and drag the team up with them, but we've also seen these situations end up in a mess.
For: Foyt's new workshop
A move of factory for Ferrucci's car from Texas to Indianapolis is a massive shift.
Bringing everything under one roof is a sensible move for basically every possible reason you can list: communication and bringing people together while working to improve, logistics, and attracting staff in the Indianapolis area, where most are based.
The last point is important because of those personnel based in Texas that Foyt will lose. But it's not even losing all of them and there's every chance this makes the team much stronger.
Against: Foyt won't beat Penske over a season
Foyt may have access to Penske parts, personnel and information, but it won't beat that team over a season given the resources Penske has.
I'm sure the contract is ironclad in terms of Penske having to hold up its side of the bargain, but in a hypothetical scenario whereby Foyt starts taking wins off Penske, you have to wonder how long that relationship would last.
Information in this case goes both ways, so the more Foyt is at the sharp end, the more Penske gains.
And you'd take all three of Penske's drivers over Ferrucci and Malukas next season. Sorry if that's disrespectful, but it's just fact.
Not only is Foyt fighting three Ganassi cars, three Andretti cars and three McLaren cars, it's fighting three Penske cars that have access to its information.
It feels a bit like Penske is playing the pub quiz and can see all of Foyt's answers. But Penske's only giving Foyt two answers per round.
Against: Qualifying
Ferrucci had an average qualifying performance of 14.47 this year, which is clearly not good enough to fight up front. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin's was 5.53.
Ferrucci's done well to rise from those lower qualifying positions to make up almost four places per race on average, but if you want to win and fight for the title you simply have to be fighting from further forward.
He says he and the team haven't quite got the timing right in qualifying, that he has done some "unorthodox things" on his outlaps, and that Portland was a "mental hurdle" he and the team leapt over in that area.
In summary, it feels harsh to be so dismissive but a combination of general IndyCar history and just how tough it is to win a championship in this series makes fighting for a title seem an ambition well out of Foyt's reach next year.
I'll be happy to be proven wrong because, despite how we're constantly told IndyCar is the most competitive single-seater championship in the world, a stretch of 22 years of only three teams winning is longer than is ideal for a competitive order.
