IndyCar: 5 possible replacements for Jimmie Johnson in 2023

Possible Jimmie Johnson replacements for 2023: No. 3 – Ryan Hunter-Reay

While he doesn’t compete full-time, Ryan Hunter-Reay, like Sebastien Bourdais, has ties to Chip Ganassi Racing, having competed for their Cadillac Racing IMSA SportsCar Championship program at Sebring International Raceway earlier this year when Scott Dixon was unavailable to do so because of the IndyCar race at Texas Motor Speedway.

The reserve driver also fits the perfect mold of “quadragenerian short-term replacement”.

The 42-year-old lost his IndyCar ride with Andretti Autosport, one in which he had won a championship and an Indy 500 over the course of 12 seasons, to Romain Grosjean after a less than stellar 2021 campaign.

While the pace was there from time to time, the overall struggles, specifically with consistency, of Andretti Autosport this past season showed that perhaps Hunter-Reay wasn’t the issue, even in a year during which he recorded only three top 10 finishes in 16 starts.

He explored a number of options for the 2022 season, but he was left without a seat for the first time in more than a decade and a half. He wasn’t even able to put together a deal to compete in the Indy 500. But this absence led to him almost immediately turning his focus to 2023 (aside from, of course, his first season in SRX over the summer).

And if one of the fastest drivers at Indianapolis Motor Speedway of the modern era gets to compete in the Indy 500 behind the wheel of the #48 Honda, don’t bet against him becoming the next two-time Indy 500 winner.