IndyCar: 2019 season in review

With just a few days remaining in the year 2019, let’s take a look back at everything the 17-race 2019 IndyCar season had to offer.

Three months removed from the conclusion of yet another IndyCar championship battle that came down to the wire, we are just days away from the beginning of a new year.

The 17-race 2019 IndyCar season ended back on Sunday, September 22, but with only three more days left before the calendar flips to 2020 and all the focus shifts to next year, let’s take one final look at everything that this past season had to offer.

For the first time since four-time champion Dario Franchitti won his second title back in 2009, America’s premier open-wheel racing series saw a driver crowned champion for the second time. In 2019, it was Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden.

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Newgarden won his first title in 2017 in what was his first season driving for Team Penske, and he did it again in even more dominant fashion in 2019.

After only one race was Newgarden not at the top of the championship standings, and if you want to get technical, he was never lower than first place entering a race.

He trailed teammate Simon Pagenaud by just one point after Pagenaud won the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in May, but he made that point back in the qualifying session for the ensuing race on the streets of Belle Isle in Detroit, Michigan before winning that race and really getting his championship run going.

Newgarden led the series with four victories, the same career-high win total he had when he won his first title in 2017, although he won the championship without a single top four finish in the season’s final five races.

Six other drivers were victorious in the 2019 season, and all six of them won multiple races. Never before in IndyCar history, going all the way back to the 1905 AAA Champ Car Series season, had every race winner in a season been a multi-race winner.

Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi, Harding Steinbrenner Racing rookie Colton Herta, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato and Team Penske’s Will Power each won two races while Pagenaud won three to trail only Newgarden.

Ironically, despite his two victories, it was not Herta who took Rookie of the Year honors, even with a seventh place finish in the championship standings. It was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, who finished in sixth in the standings with two top finishes of second.

The two other rookies were Dale Coyne Racing’s Santino Ferrucci and Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Marcus Ericsson. Ferrucci was in contention to win the Rookie of the Year Award entering the season finale, but he came up shy. Ericsson, despite finishing in a season-best second place at Belle Isle, was the lowest rookie finisher.

The 2020 IndyCar season is scheduled to get underway in roughly two and a half months with the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. This race is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network from the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida beginning at 3:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, March 15. What will the 17-race 2020 season have to offer?