Mikhail Aleshin
Finally, we have a driver who might well be number one on the list of IndyCar drivers you may have forgotten existed. We went with Mikhail Aleshin, whom we selected over a number of others who very easily could have been included on this list.
Aleshin was admittedly never on the level of someone such as Robert Wickens, who was a contender to win every time he got behind the wheel. But Aleshin's IndyCar tenure was brought to an end far too soon, given what he displayed during his first two full seasons.
As a rookie, he finished runner-up behind teammate Simon Pagenaud, who would go on to become an IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner with Team Penske, on the streets of Houston. He lost his ride after 2014 but returned with the same Schmidt Peterson Motorsports team in 2016.
That summer, Aleshin came out of nowhere and emerged as the driver to beat. From the race at Iowa Speedway through the race at Pocono Raceway, nobody was faster.
He finished in fifth place at Iowa, sixth on the streets of Toronto, and dominated the race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, in a year when Honda won only twice, before a pit stop issue ultimately handed the win to Pagenaud, who won the championship that year. Then the following race at Pocono, Aleshin took his first career pole but had to settle for second behind Will Power.
He was unfortunately replaced just before the Pocono race in 2017, which was one of the most chaotic, yet clean, races the Tricky Triangle saw during its IndyCar run from 2013 to 2019. Could that have been his day, had he stuck around? It's a major what-if, to this day.
And not to be completely superstitious, but he drove the No. 7 Honda in all but one of his 46 starts. The last driver to win in a No. 7 car, to this day, is still Danica Patrick, who won her one and only IndyCar race at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan back in April 2008, nearly 300 races ago.