IndyCar: 2018 championship battle should be wide open once again

With how competitive IndyCar has become and with the return of universal aero kits, the 2018 season’s championship battle should be wide open.

The IndyCar championship battle is rarely not intense. It’s not like Formula One where there is rarely more than one driver alive to win the title heading into the season finale. It’s not like NASCAR where a playoff system is used in order to ensure that exactly four drivers are alive to win the title heading into the season finale.

In IndyCar, it comes down to the wire every single season. In fact, there have been at least two drivers eligible to win the championship heading into the season finale in each season since 2006. While double points have been used in the last four years in the season finale to make things closer, this was still the case in each season from 2006 to 2013 as well.

In each of the past 12 seasons, the champion has been decided in the season finale, and there is no reason to believe that that streak will not get to 13 years in 2018. In fact, this past season, there were seven drivers eligible to win the title heading into the season finale.

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In the 2015 season, there were six drivers eligible to win the championship heading into the season finale, and in the 2016 season, which was dominated by Simon Pagenaud, there were still two drivers eligible to win the title heading into the season finale, with the second being Will Power, who actually missed the season opener and still found himself in championship contention.

With universal aero kits returning to the sport for the first time since 2014, the 2018 championship battle should not only come down to the wire, but it should be wide open like it has been in two of the last three seasons once again with perhaps more championship contenders than ever, even a few surprising ones.

With everyone starting off fresh in the news cars that are intended to force drivers to utilize more of their driving skills to be successful, expect the true skill of drivers to be brought out. With every single one of the drivers in the field being professionals, expect the gap from first to last to shrink.

Here is what Motorsport.com’s David Malsher had to say about the prospects of the 2018 universal aero kit.

"“One of the messages emerging from roadcourse testing of the 2018 IndyCar is that lead-footed drivers will get ‘found out,’ and they’ll either have to broaden their skillset or become obsolete. Those who have artificially thrived in downforce-drenched manufacturer aerokit-equipped cars, and tend to apply only full throttle or maximum braking force, are going to have to learn how to find the points in between.”"

In other words, the performance of these new cars will be reliant more so on driver skill level and talent than aerodynamics and setups like the case has been recently, especially in each of the last three seasons.

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With the drivers essentially being “put back into the cockpit”, expect every single one of them to want to win every race and do everything they possibly can to get to the front. Not one of these professionals wouldn’t do whatever it takes to make that happen. They’re not afraid to take risks. With the amount of “everything” that they can possibly do being higher in the 2018 season than it has been in seasons past, expect that to set up another extremely competitive, epic and wide open championship battle.