They say great things come in threes. Things like blind mice or stooges. Yes, that means your humble host is comparing this current series of Indycar posts to stooges and blind mice.
Today we set out to conclude the math on Indycar Wins in the completely-contrived DW12 Era by adding up the totals for both Road Courses and Street circuits. Don’t ever let anyone tell you these are basically the same thing, because the totals will show some significantly different drivers on each list. Also, don’t let anyone ever tell you that Jim Nabors was a horrible singer. I generally condone settling arguments with a conversation of understanding, but if someone is going to throw shade at Jim Nabors. . .oh, it’s ON!
Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes. Just for giggles, let’s break those non-oval wins down even more. Because just like jellybeans, not all right turns are the same.
Street Course Wins
Let’s go over the Top Five, which are actually Six. Because there are no tiebreakers for Fifth.
#5 – James Hinchcliffe. Hinch has three street course wins in a DW12, which is none too shabby. Then again that’s just two more than Carlos Huertas, so let’s not get too excited. The three wins ties Hinch with. . .
#5 – Mike Conway. Holy blast from the past, Batman! I don’t remember the last time Conway drove in the Indycar series, but before he departed he’d notched three wins on the mean streets of Indycar. How soon we forget!
#3 – Simon Pagenaud. Oh look, we skipped a number. That must mean that with his four wins Pagenaud is tied with someone, who might be from the same nation.
#3 – Sebastien Bourdais. You knew Bourdais was still good, right? He’s got four wins on the streets, and that doesn’t even count all of the races he missed with his broken body parts this season. Then again, if we’re going to discuss missing races, Conway definitely has driven less Indycar events than anyone else on this list.
#2 – Scott Dixon. One better than Pagenaud and Bourdais is Dixon with five wins. But as you can imagine, there’s not a lot of surprise who is first on this list.
#1 – Will Power. What is surprising is that Power only has 7 wins. Somehow in memory it feels like he has so many more, but maybe that’s just me reimagining his many oval wins as street victories. Or perhaps it’s non-prescription medication. And I probably shouldn’t have said anything about that out loud, should I?
Behind those on this list with two street course victories each is a solid group that includes Helio Castroneves, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Josef Newgarden, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Graham Rahal. And yes, it does feel like several of these drivers are outside of the Top Five on nearly every list.
Road Course Wins
If you are savvy enough, you can probably do the subtraction from all of the numbers I have provided to figure out the totals for the road courses. If you prefer, I’ll wait while you break out your own spreadsheet.
(Really?!? – The Spotter)
OK, if you’ve chosen to go the easy route and simply read my totals, good on you. Let’s go to the Top Three.
#3 – Will Power. Finally a list that doesn’t flatter Power, although with five wins he’s only one behind. . .
#1 – Scott Dixon. Finally something for Dixon can claim over Power. Along with a win at the Indy 500. And several more Indycar series championships. OK, Dixon is doing fine. But he’s tied for first on this list with. . .
#1 – Simon Pagenaud. Pagenaud also has six road course wins, which means he’s currently gets to share the King of the Road Course in the DW12 crown with Dixon. It’s a figurative crown, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I should probably put a summary here now that I’ve spent three posts on this single subject, and I don’t have any analysis that you can’t figure out. Maybe the only observation I have is that Scott Dixon has clearly been the best Indycar driver of the last few decades, but in the DW12 era with kinda sorta equal equipment he’s been bested by Will Power in nearly every category.
One fun fact I will throw out there – the three of the top four in overall wins (Power, Dixon, Hunter-Reay) are all within nine months of each other in age. This should make for an interesting storyline as the three presumably approach the final years of their Indycar careers.
And then there’s Newgarden, who is 10 years the younger of that group and eventually will go ahead and best all of their records, right?