IndyCar

Winners and losers from IndyCar's thrilling 2024 season finale

by Jack Benyon
7 min read

A third championship for Alex Palou and Will Power’s seat belt issues headlined a wild IndyCar race at Nashville won by Colton Herta.

Those were the obvious stories getting the attention in the aftermath, but what of the rest of the field which had plenty to fight for in the last race of the season?

And what about an event that was never supposed to be on this oval after its controversial move from a downtown street circuit?

We assess the winners and losers from the Nashville IndyCar weekend.

Loser - Scott Dixon

With 17th in the season finale, Dixon dropped a place to sixth in the standings, his worst finish in eight years.

Dixon was pinned a lap down early on and struggled to get his lap back, and that result sums up a year where he started looking like he could fight for the title, but struggles at Barber and Road America, a hybrid issue at Mid-Ohio, and being taken out at Portland were a few incidents too many to sustain a charge.

Wins at Long Beach and Detroit showed how he can still be untouchable and do things other drivers can't, but this season will still be one to forget despite many highlights.

Winner - Colton Herta

He’s chased this goal for years, to win on an oval. Growing up in the IndyCar paddock and with his father Bryan achieving the feat, it’s easy to see why it was so important to Herta.

He’s been close before, only to have opportunities slip away. This is a huge achievement for him and there can’t be many things, other than a 500 win or IndyCar title, that you can imagine meaning more to the 24-year-old.

Especially doing it in the season finale in the city he lives in to jump from fourth to second in the standings.

Loser - Marcus Ericsson

Too many people are looking at Marcus Ericsson’s results and not paying the correct amount of attention to the things that have gone against him.

But that doesn’t change the fact that he came to Andretti this year hoping to fight for a top five and maybe even the title, and actually managed 15th.

He ran in the top five at Nashville but crashed out, summing up the season perfectly.

Winner - Christian Rasmussen

Reigning Indy NXT champion Christian Rasmussen has had a rollercoaster first season in IndyCar, but with 14th in the season finale he secured his Ed Carpenter Racing team 22nd in the points and with it $1 million for reaching the Leaders’ Circle.

It’s been a tough year for the rookie where has made mistakes but also has been robbed of multiple strong finishes that would have boosted him up the standings through no fault of his own.

Plus, he finished 12th at the Indy 500, under a different car number with his eponymous team owner in the #20 car for the ovals this year.

Then came one of the most self-aware moments of the year, which can’t have been easy for a multiple Indy 500 polesitter, when Carpenter decided to put Rasmussen in the car and step aside for the last four races.

Three of his results were better than any Carpenter had managed earlier in the season. It’s a move that may have hurt Carpenter’s ego but paid off with a $1 million prize.

Loser - Alexander Rossi

A 15th place finish ends Alexander Rossi’s time at Arrow McLaren, and drops him a position in the championship to 10th.
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It’s worth remembering that Rossi missed Toronto after a crash in practice broke his thumb. Before this weekend, he was ahead of Josef Newgarden and Santino Ferrucci in points per race, but dropped behind Newgarden in this race.

So dropping behind Ferrucci maybe isn’t fair in the grand scheme of things. But with his team-mate Pato O’Ward well ahead for a second year, it won’t be the way Rossi will have wanted to end his time at McLaren. Even if taking into account Rossi missing Toronto makes things better than most people will care to pay attention to.

Winners - Ganassi's jettisoned duo

With Chip Ganassi Racing downsizing to three cars next year, the rookies of the year for the last two seasons, Marcus Armstrong and Linus Lundqvist respectively, are out on their ears for 2025.

It must hurt knowing that performance-wise they both have a right to the third Ganassi car, but it’s going to Kyffin Simpson who brings a significant budget.

Armstrong appears set to join the Meyer Shank team, which has signed a technical partnership from 2025 with Ganassi, but Lundqvist doesn’t bring a lot of budget to the table and will have to fight for a seat elsewhere.

He’s good enough to take seats at Rahal, Juncos or Coyne, but without budget, there’s a chance he’ll be jumped with two drivers coming up from Indy NXT in the mix alongside the musical chairs already happening in IndyCar.

Lundqvist has a pole and two podiums this season, one on a street circuit and one on an oval. He’s earned a chance but might not get it.

Finishing the season eighth, with Armstrong seventh, can’t have done either any harm.

Loser - Felix Rosenqvist

After the first four races Felix Rosenqvist was fifth in the points, but a rough second half of the season means Rosenqvist finished 12th.

He and the Meyer Shank team were the story of the first few races and his form was excellent, but an extremely high amount of bad luck - like Nashville where his front-right tyre deflated while in the top three - and some small errors on his own side meant a season with so much promise ended with a sense of dissatisfaction.

Rosenqvist has his marriage to look forward to, and the knowledge that the team made a big step in performance next year. A return to working with Ganassi, which he raced for but left at the end of 2020 for McLaren - will be fascinating to watch next year.

Winner - The event

Only a touch more than a year ago high-powered IndyCar executives lauded the move of the Nashville IndyCar street race even further into downtown and along Broadway, where the famous honky-tonk music venues line the road.

Only months later it was moved to the oval because the planning was so far behind that the street race seemed implausible.

It could have been a nightmare, but in part thanks to the investment put into the Nashville Super Speedway with the recent return of NASCAR, and Big Machine company owner Scott Borcheta proving a force of nature as the event’s sponsor and supremo, Sunday’s event was spectacular.

From hoards of coaches bussing fans in from downtown Nashville 25 minutes out of the city to the track, to Diplo (below) hosting an energetic driver introductions, to a packed grid and what felt like a fairly full grandstand.

This event felt like a massive success.

It will be interesting to see the attendance numbers, but hopefully the event is rewarded for the effort time and money that went into providing fans a brilliant experience in the lead-up to and including the race.

Short of working to remove a bump in Turn 4 which caused trouble for some teams and drivers all weekend, the track raced well, offered a good spectacle and even beat expectations in terms of being able to race side by side.

It’s hard to describe how fun Nashville is as a city, but this race matched it.

Loser - Will Power

He was a winner in the sense that he finished Sunday’s race safely, and pitted when a seat belt came loose early on despite the incentive of continuing to try and win the championship.

That stop put him five laps down and not only cost him a chance at the title, but dropped him from second to fourth in the standings. Three wins is tied for the most this year, he just lacked the consistency to get a third title over the line.

Winner - Alex Palou

This will be no surprise to anyone and you’ll be reading and hearing enough about Palou that much more detail probably isn’t even necessary. IndyCar champion, top five in 14 of the 17 races and three titles in four years.

It’s been an incredible run and it’s hard to see it coming to an end anytime soon.

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