There may have only been two races in the 2022 IndyCar season, but some drivers are already reaching the danger zone in terms of needing a result if they are to stay in the championship hunt.
The championship is so closely fought and competitive that going on a run of wins to alleviate poor form is unlikely, which means finding consistency is key – and some drivers are in desperate need of just that.
There are others too who need a big result for other reasons, but we’ll get to them shortly. Here are the drivers to watch closely at Long Beach.
Pato O’Ward
The Race’s recent deep-dive into what it takes to win an IndyCar championship highlighted that you need to be scoring around 38 points per race and to have no more than three finishes outside of the top 15, although three of the last five championships were won with one or fewer finishes outside of the top 15 over the season.
O’Ward has a total of 33 points from the first two races after a tricky start for the Arrow McLaren SP driver.
Amid rumours of a rift between O’Ward and the team over his future, he made a mistake in qualifying at St Petersburg before a brilliant comeback drive was thwarted by poor strategy (which many teams tried, in fairness), and then a top five at Texas was lost with a pitlane lock-up – which his team-mate Felix Rosenqvist also suffered from at the same time.
While a lot of O’Ward’s poor start and questions over his future have effectively been out of his hands, he has to take things back under control at Long Beach.
He qualified well and looked set for a good result at Long Beach before being punted out on the first lap by Ed Jones in one of the calamities of the season last year, so it’s not out of the question the young Mexican can bounce back here.
One thing is for sure; O’Ward being 13th in the championship isn’t good for anyone. We want to see the best drivers in the series fighting up front.
Alexander Rossi
What to write that hasn’t already been written?
Rossi reportedly turned down a contract extension at Andretti and is racing for a 2023 deal this year either at that team or elsewhere, but he hasn’t had the start he needed so far.
He couldn’t bounce back from a poor qualifying in St Pete with a bad and unusual strategy that didn’t pay off and then his sticky form at Texas struck again, as he jumped the start then promptly retired with a mechanical issue.
Although he didn’t look quite as at home on the first visit to Long Beach with the aeroscreen last year, he won the previous two races so has form here.
It feels like it’s somewhere that, if he’s going to persuade a top team to take a gamble on him, he needs to be on par with his team-mate Colton Herta. If he can’t match Herta at one of his best tracks, he may well be in trouble. That would make it harder to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Especially with a fast-starting Romain Grosjean much closer to Herta at St Pete than Rossi.
Graham Rahal
Rahal’s had a very Rahal start to 2022. Although he avoided a repeat of being punted out of a top-five finish by Rossi at St Pete – which is what happened in 2021 – he took a decent seventh but then crashed out at Texas in a chain reaction incident where three drivers ran out of room.
The results mean Rahal is 12th, and if he’s to put himself back in contention Long Beach would be a nice place to do it.
Perhaps this entry should be more Rahal Letterman Lanigan focused, as it started Texas so slowly that just for morale purposes it needs to roll off the truck faster at Long Beach.
Jack Harvey returns from injury after a practice crash while Christian Lundgaard looks to continue his rookie learning curve. The team was much better on race pace at Texas but starting strong needs to be the priority for this team, which didn’t have the best of times at Long Beach last year.
Colton Herta
Herta has already missed one obvious win chance this year at St Pete, where he dominated in 2021, as the team couldn’t fill his car with fuel and he had to save like crazy to grab fourth. At Texas, Herta looked in contention all day until a wheel stuck on at the final stop.
It was another oval race where he looked like a winner but was thwarted by matters out of his control.
Herta won at Long Beach last year despite a qualifying error that meant he had to come from outside of the top 10 to do it. Could another top result spark his first ever realistic title charge?
One thing he might want to keep in mind is that no driver since Simon Pagenaud in 2016 has won Long Beach and the championship in the same season.
Kyle Kirkwood
Mastered in- and out-laps on his first IndyCar start: check. Excited and wowed with brave overtaking on his series oval debut: check. It’s been a fantastic start to Kyle Kirkwood’s career.
He got caught on the wrong strategy in St Pete and crashed at Texas where, to be honest, you may have predicted it was going to happen given how aggressive his overtaking had been at times during the race.
We’ve seen a bit of everything from Kirkwood so far. Now you feel a top-10 result would galvanise this driver and the AJ Foyt team, with the next two tracks – Long Beach and Barber – both ones it should run well at.
At Long Beach, Sebastien Bourdais scored an eighth place last year so the car should be capable. It’s not an absolute season-ender if Kirkwood doesn’t pull everything together at Long Beach, but it would certainly see his stock rise if he learns from some of the errors and cleans up some bits that have held him back slightly so far. Fundamentally, though, it’s been a good start.
Felix Rosenqvist
Another in the Rossi camp of what do you write that hasn’t been written?
A pole at Texas looked to be exactly what Rosenqvist needed after a tricky St Pete weekend off the back of a nightmare 2021. But poor pitstops cost him the chance at a victory after running up front comfortably in the first stint.
It feels like Rosenqvist and the #7 team can get bits of a race weekend right, but just can’t string a solid weekend together of qualifying somewhere near the top 10 then finishing in it.
After its Texas woe you feel like this is an opportunity for the team to show and back up the talk of how far it has come in the off-season with a result. Anything less risks creating a very difficult upcoming period of keeping morale in the right place.
