IndyCar: Marco Andretti’s historic streak is officially over

Marco Andretti’s consecutive IndyCar starts streak has officially come to an end at 248 following the 2021 season opener at Barber Motorsports Park.

The delayed 17-race 2021 IndyCar season got underway on Sunday afternoon at Barber Motorsports Park with the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama presented by AmFirst, and it did so without a familiar name in the 24-car field.

For the first time since he became an IndyCar driver back in 2006, Marco Andretti was not behind the wheel of an open-wheel car.

After 15 seasons of full-time competition at the top level of American open-wheel racing, the 34-year-old Nazareth, Pennsylvania native made the decision to step away from full-time competition back in mid-January.

He is set to compete full-time in the six-race Superstar Racing Experience (SRX) this summer instead.

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But by not competing in Sunday’s 90-lap race around the 17-turn, 2.38-mile (3.830-kilometer) natural terrain road course in Birmingham, Alabama, Andretti saw a historic streak come to an end.

Last season, we saw the all-time record streak of consecutive starts, 318, come to an end when Tony Kanaan missed the first race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course in early July. It marked the first race in which he had not competed since 2001.

Andretti’s streak then moved up to second place on the active list behind that of Scott Dixon, and it ended the year at 248. Dixon has now competed in 273 consecutive IndyCar races, including yesterday’s, going back to 2004.

We have now seen two of the longest three streaks of all-time come to an end within nine and a half months of one another, but Andretti’s is far more significant than simply ranking in the top three on the all-time list.

Never in IndyCar history has a driver started his career and then competed in more consecutive races than Andretti did. That 248-race streak was — and still is, although it can’t grow any longer — the all-time record.

A total of 24 drivers competed in the season opener. Of those 24 drivers, 16 have missed at least one race since they made their IndyCar debut.

Of the eight who haven’t, only three had competed in a race before 2020. The driver with the longest active streak is Alexander Rossi, whose streak now sits at 82. Behind him are Colton Herta at 33, Felix Rosenqvist at 32, Alex Palou and Rinus VeeKay at 15, Scott McLaughlin at two, and Jimmie Johnson and Romain Grosjean at one.

Ryan Hunter-Reay’s streak is the fourth longest of all-time behind Kanaan, Dixon and Andretti at 224, and he hasn’t missed an IndyCar race since making his debut in 2007, but he also competed in several Champ Car races before that. He missed two races in 2005 and didn’t compete in 2006.

However, Andretti is still set to compete in IndyCar this year, just not on a full-time basis. He is set to compete behind the wheel of the #98 Honda for Andretti Herta-Haupert Autosport w/ Marco Andretti & Curb-Agajanian in the 105th running of the Indy 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway next month, and he hasn’t ruled out competing in other select races.

The second race of the 2021 season is scheduled to take place on Sunday, April 25. This race, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, is set to be broadcast live on NBC from the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida beginning at 12:00 p.m. ET.