IndyCar: Is Zach Veach’s Andretti Autosport replacement obvious?

Zach Veach’s IndyCar tenure at Andretti Autosport came to an unexpected end on Wednesday. Is his replacement moving forward obvious?

After Andretti Autosport made the decision not to extend Zach Veach’s three-year contract into the 2021 IndyCar season, Veach himself made the decision to step away from the driving duties of the #26 Honda immediately, despite the fact that three races remain on the 14-race 2020 schedule.

The 25-year-old Stockdale, Ohio native opted to go this route to allow Andretti Autosport to look at their other options moving forward, and also so he could look at his own options moving forward, given that a return to Michael Andretti’s team for 2021 is officially off the table.

Regardless of whether or not he ends up competing in 2021, it is highly unlikely that we will see Veach back behind the wheel of a car in the 2020 season.

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So the attention is solely on who Andretti Autosport will have pilot the #26 Honda in the season’s remaining three races, including two at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course and the season finale on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida, the venue that had initially been slated to open the season for the 10th straight year before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

To whom will Andretti Autosport turn?

The obvious answer is James Hinchcliffe. Hinchcliffe ran a part-time schedule for Andretti Autosport this season that included the race at Texas Motor Speedway, the first of three races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, and the Indy 500. He led the team with a seventh place finish in the Indy 500 despite a pit issue that sent him to the back early on.

Hinchcliffe, who drove for the team full-time from 2012 to 2014, reunited with them ahead of the 2020 season after losing his ride with Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (now Arrow McLaren SP) after five years.

Andretti has said that he would like to have Hinchcliffe back full-time next year, so putting him in the car for an additional three races this year makes sense.

However, in some respect, it would make sense to hire literally anybody other than Hinchcliffe, perhaps even two drivers, one for Indianapolis and another for St. Petersburg, just to allow them to assess their options, considering they already know what Hinchcliffe brings to the table and they have already run him in three events this season.

The only issue there is who would that be?

We know Tony Kanaan, a former Andretti Autosport driver himself, is out of a ride for next year but doesn’t want to retire completely.

But he has been linked to an ovals-only drive at Chip Ganassi Racing for 2021, so would a deal to compete in three road course races really be of interest to him unless there is the potential to run full-time next year, something he said back in January that he plans to step away from?

Then there is Sage Karam, a former Andretti Autosport driver in the Star Mazda Championship and a native of Nazareth, Pennsylvania. His relationship with Andretti has been anything but smooth after he decided to leave their program for an Indy Lights ride with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports before the 2013 season.

But that was eight years ago now, and he has yet to get a full-time IndyCar opportunity. Still just 25 years old, could he finally get that shot?

He is already slated to compete in the two races at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in early October for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, however, so bringing him on for a one-race audition doesn’t make a ton of sense.

In terms of a 2021 potential replacement, don’t forget about Takuma Sato. He doesn’t have a contract to run with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing next year, and while that is almost guaranteed to change, nobody expected him to leave Andretti Autosport after just one season when he did so back in 2017, fresh off an Indy 500 win.

It was a move he only made due to the team’s talks with Chevrolet, and they are locked in with Honda now on a multi-year deal. They haven’t run Chevrolet engines since 2013.

Now Sato is an Indy 500 winner for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, a team he already left once after 2012 — when he probably should’ve won the Indy 500 if not for a far too aggressive move. Will history repeat itself?

Naturally, he wouldn’t get the seat until 2021, even in the slight chance that this happens, and it’s not like Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing are considering Chevrolet like Andretti Autosport were three years ago, but with Sato, you never rule anything out. Andretti Autosport never wanted to lose him to begin with, and did he really want to leave?

The problem with this is that neither Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing nor Sato appear interested in what would amount to randomly cutting ties.

Andretti Autosport fielded the entries for the most recent two Indy Lights champions, Pato O’Ward in 2018 and Oliver Askew in 2019. But both drivers are slated to return to Arrow McLaren SP for next year.

What about Indy Lights driver Ryan Norman, the 22-year-old who won for the team at Road America last year en route to his second straight fourth place finish in the championship standings?

Finally, there is always Carlos Munoz, a former Andretti Autosport driver who has been without a full-time ride since 2017 and hasn’t competed in the series at all since 2018 when he filled in for the injured Robert Wickens at Schmidt Peterson Motorsports for two races.

Arguably the best Indy 500 non-winner of this era, he has not had a competitive ride since he was cut by Andretti Autosport after the 2016 season in favor of Sato.

But even moving Hinchcliffe to full-time would allow Andretti Autosport to put Munoz in a car for Indy, so unless there are serious discussions about bringing him back full-time next year, it wouldn’t make a ton of sense to run him in three road course races next month.

All in all, there are more options than just Hinchcliffe to fill Veach’s seat, not only next year but over the final three races of the 2020 season. But Hinchcliffe is the obvious option for both.