IndyCar: Danica Patrick 2018 Indianapolis 500 team prediction

By Asher Fair | Jan 30, 2018

NEWTON, IA - JUNE 24: Danica Patrick drives the #7 GoDaddy.com Honda races during practice for the running of the Iowa Corn Indy 250 at Iowa Speedway on June 24, 2011 in Newton, Iowa. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images) /

There are several possible teams for which Danica Patrick can make her IndyCar return in the 2018 Indianapolis 500. Which team will sign her?

With Danica Patrick, 35, having secured a ride for the 60th annual Daytona 500, her final NASCAR Cup Series race, in less than three weeks with Premium Motorsports, her focus is now on securing a ride for the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500, her final IndyCar race, at the end of May.

Several teams have ruled out fielding an entry for Patrick in this year’s edition of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”, a race in which she has not driven since the 2011 season, which was her final full-time IndyCar season.

However, several teams have recently emerged as potential candidates, with three being deemed as serious. Those three teams are Ed Carpenter Racing, Harding Racing and Dreyer & Reinbold Racing. Which team will she end up driving for in the race?

The likelihood that that team will be Ed Carpenter Racing seems to be small. Ed Carpenter Racing have run an extra car in three of the last four seasons, but those three seasons were the 2014, 2015 and 2016 seasons — the three seasons since 2014 during which J.R. Hildebrand did not have a full-time ride with the team.

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Hildebrand had a full-time ride with the team in the 2017 season, so the team did not enter a third car in the race. With Hildebrand out of a full-time ride again in the 2018 season, expect the team’s third car to be driven by him as opposed to Patrick.

Harding Racing would make some but not a ton of sense for Patrick. They have just three races under their belt as a team in IndyCar, and all three of those races came as a one-car part-time team in the 2017 season with Gabby Chaves as their driver. While he recorded two solid results in those three races, those results came largely as a result of the fact that the attrition rates in those two races were uncharacteristically high.

While becoming a two-car team for the Indianapolis 500 is not out of the question for Harding Racing since they are now set to be a one-car full-time team for the first time, it is hard to see Patrick, who made clear that she wants a competitive ride for the race, ending up driving for them given how inexperienced they are as a team.

Dreyer & Reinbold Racing is probably Patrick’s most likely option in terms of an Indianapolis 500 team. Ever since they stopped competing in IndyCar as a full-time team after the 2011 season, they have fielded one entry in each of the last six Indianapolis 500 races. In the 2012 and 2013 Indianapolis 500 races, the team fielded Oriol Servia. In the 2014, 2016 and 2017 Indianapolis 500 races, they fielded Sage Karam, and in the 2015 Indianapolis 500, they fielded Townsend Bell.

Karam will likely end up driving for the team again in the 2018 Indianapolis 500. However, they are set to be a two-car team for the race this year. Given their solid speed and results at the race in recent years, it seems likely that this is the team for which Patrick will drive in this year’s running of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing”.

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Which team will Danica Patrick end up driving for in the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 this May? Within the next few weeks, we should have an answer to that question. The race is scheduled for Memorial Day Sunday, as usual. The date it is scheduled for this year is Sunday, May 27th.

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