On-Track Passing in IndyCar by Track Type

by Sean Wrona

Here I repeat the same kind of analysis that I did for NASCAR by tallying lead changes for all drivers from 1982 to the present on the four main track types in IndyCar: superspeedways, short ovals, road courses, and street courses. I had this article nearly entirely written for a couple of weeks except for the introduction and conclusion and I'm sorry I held off so long but I've been in a lot of pain and kind of drifted off. Nonetheless, I do want to finish this article along with a similar year-by-year article so I can move on to material I think is frankly more interesting. For the past year or so, I've been planning a dream project which I want to self-publish as a book ranking the top 1000 drivers in motorsports history. There have been many overall driver lists but I've always found the European lists to skew too much in favor of Formula One and for the American lists to skew too much in favor of NASCAR, and I want to include everything else too: rally cars, sports cars, touring cars, drag racing, sprint car racing, and the like. I intend to use models doing teammate vs. teammate comparisons in the manner of other sites like F1metrics for the series that have more complete data to do rankings within each series, but I intend to use those rankings only as a rough guide, and I will also want to consider team performance over a multi-year period to reflect which drivers made their teams better and which did not (for instance much of Michael Schumacher's legacy is that Benetton collapsed without him and Ferrari suddenly ascended to prominence with him, and teammate vs. teammate comparisons by themselves do not reflect this properly.) I intend to group drivers in four categories: locks, near locks, bubble, and fringe, and I have probably already noticed most of the drivers who would likely be on the list, but I will likely crowdsource for ideas of drivers, particularly drivers in obscure grassroots series who deserve mention but would likely be overlooked. I do intend to also use the data I am collecting here on lead change records along with lap time data for more recent drivers. I definitely differ from most racing analysts in not believing the finish is the only thing that matters, and I continue to think that often the TNL matters more when evaluating a driver's performance (as in which drivers put themselves into the lead most through their own efforts rather than sheer luck), and that is certainly connected to the lead change data below, particularly on the road and street courses in IndyCar because quite often there are none or only one on-track lead change in the race. I also recently made best guesses on whom I think the TNL was for every race in NASCAR Cup history (which will probably be the subject of an upcoming future column), and I will probably be doing the same for IndyCar and for F1 shortly thereafter (and perhaps later even for sports and touring car series, although I think leader data would be much, much harder to find for those, particularly prior to the current decade), because I think win vs. TNL statistics are often one of the best ways to determine which drivers are the most overrated/underrated. Ultimately, I came to the conclusion while doing this that lead changes on short ovals (which by IndyCar standards I defined as ovals of less than 1.5 miles, since that seems to be the IndyCar standard, not the 1 mile that NASCAR generally uses) along with those on road courses and street courses were generally so rare (particularly on natural road courses) that the data may be lacking meaning simply due to too small a sample size. Nonetheless, the data do mean something and there are clearly some drivers who shine and some who do not in every category.

Superspeedways

I suspected that this list would be skewed towards modern drivers because in the IRL/IndyCar period there were generally more superspeedways on the schedule (particularly before Champ Car and IndyCar reunited) and also because there were generally more lead changes on these tracks in the 2000s and 2010s than there was in the 1980s and 1990s. This is largely due to the fact that IndyCar racing in the CART years was not spec and very few teams were capable of leading, while in more recent seasons (in the late '90s and later), the teams were generally more evenly matched on superspeedways. When you further add that the Handford device races at Michigan and Fontana and the recent Indy 500s that had absurd numbers of lead changes to such a degree that it was likely to easy to pass also count toward the superspeedways count, it remains easy to understand why this list is dominated by drivers who peaked after the split, particularly the drivers who switched from CART to IRL in the early 2000s. Because there are far more lead changes on superspeedways than on short ovals or road courses, results on this list tend to be more correlated with the overall lead change data more than the other lists.

Although I am not surprised Tony Kanaan has taken the lead in more superspeedway races from 1982 to present than any other driver, I am a bit surprised by the margin of victory. His sheer dominance on this list was enough to give him the second most races led naturally of all drivers in this period behind only Michael Andretti and more even than his ex-teammate Scott Dixon, even though many of the drivers who trail him in races led naturally were superior. Kanaan led 49 superspeedway races naturally while no other driver led more than 30. It is likely that Kanaan would lead this list even if I counted all the years prior to the '80s because prior to that there weren't many superspeedways on the schedule except for Indianapolis, Michigan, Fontana, and Ontario, and there were few lead changes per race in those years. Kanaan simply competed on this kind of track more often in his prime than even A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, and the Unsers did. Considering his massive advantage over even Michael Andretti, who did lead in a lot of those Handford device races, I suspect that Kanaan has led more superspeedway races naturally than any other IndyCar driver ever. Clearly I underrated him in the past when I placed him only in the 50s on my all-time list, especially considering he dominated drivers like Alex Zanardi and Dario Franchitti when they were teammates. Kanaan may not have been all that well balanced because he was a much better oval driver than road course or street course driver and he may not have faced the greatest competition ever, but he does seem to have been the best oval driver of his generation and one of the best ever. He led at eleven different superspeedways, more than any other driver, which is certainly skewed by him competing on the all-oval IRL and mostly-superspeedway schedules in 2003 and 2004, but he had a .500 or better lead change record on all of them except for Kansas. His 118-101 record is not the best lead change percentage, but it is still quite solid. His trends on superspeedways in general were also reflected at Indianapolis, where he led ten races naturally, three more than anyone else, and his Indianapolis lead change record of 41-33 is the largest difference between lead changes for and against, if not the greatest percentage. What makes Kanaan look even more impressive is that he faced an equipment deficit for large portions of his career, especially in his late years with Andretti Autosport and his years with KV Racing in 2011-2013, where he gave them the only superspeedway win in the team's existence, and he was only one of two drivers along with Buddy Rice in 2004 to win an Indy 500 naturally for a team other than Penske, Ganassi, and Andretti since the CART teams returned to Indianapolis in 2000.

Kanaan's five chief rivals in the late pre-merger IRL: Hélio Castroneves, Scott Dixon, Dario Franchitti, Sam Hornish, and Dan Wheldon also factor highly on this list, but none of them come close in terms of races led. My instinct just from watching the races is that Dixon, Hornish, Kanaan, and Wheldon were overwhelmingly the four best oval drivers of that era while Castroneves and Franchitti, despite earning more Indy 500 wins than any of them were not nearly impressive on ovals in general, but were just luckier to end up with more Indy 500 wins than the other four got. My instinct was right on Kanaan, Wheldon, and Hornish, who all had positive lead change records and positive records on most of the ovals they competed on as well. However, my gut instinct was wrong on Scott Dixon, who was much to my surprise nowhere near as impressive as Kanaan on these tracks even though he had premier cars more often than Kanaan did. Wheldon and Hornish are substantially lower on the list because they simply had left the series or no longer had top tier equipment by 2007 or 2008. That does not however explain Castroneves and Dixon, who had top equipment more often than Kanaan and ran just as many races as Kanaan did, yet both managed to have negative lead change records. It appears these two drivers especially have been overrated on this track type. Even though Hornish left for NASCAR after 2007 and Wheldon died in 2011, Castroneves and Dixon have not posted substantially more races led naturally than them as I would expect. Clearly their greatness has been more on road or street courses (road courses in Dixon's case and street courses in Castroneves's case.) Franchitti looks even worse than I expected, only leading 17 races naturally (even fewer than Tomas Scheckter, who retired earlier) which is a big surprise, but not that surprising. To me, this track type was clearly Franchitti's weakness which is why his early IRL seasons (when the series was mostly an all-oval series) were usually not as impressive as his CART seasons before. In that era, he was considered almost exclusively a road and street course driver, and he didn't really start becoming a dominant force on superspeedways until late in his career, particularly after his return to IndyCar in 2009 for Ganassi after his brief switch to NASCAR. While Franchitti was a better driver overall than Kanaan, Kanaan was clearly a much better driver on superspeedways, which explains his major advantage over Franchitti in 2004-2006 when they were teammates. By that point, there were fewer superspeedways on the schedule. From the recent period, it appears that Kanaan, Wheldon, and Hornish were the strongest on this track type while Castroneves, Dixon, and Franchitti were weaker. It does seem that Castroneves and Franchitti's reputations on superspeedways are inflated by their Indianapolis success, especially Castroneves since he only was TNL in one race compared to his three wins (while Kanaan was along with Juan Pablo Montoya and Franchitti one of the only three drivers in the post-split period to be TNL at Indy twice.) Dixon's dueling ability (most reflected on superspeedways), like Franchitti's, is also overrated by his record in general.

Drivers from the CART period who did not cross over to the late-split IRL did not tend to do as well by this metric, simply because as stated earlier there were fewer superspeedway races per season and generally fewer lead changes within those superspeedway races. Michael Andretti however clearly dominated all drivers in his era on this track type. He did obviously get a boost from being one of the most dominant drivers in the Handford device races at Michigan and Fontana from 1998-2002, even if he did not actually win any of those races. Despite the fact that those races had endless slingshot passing and repassing to such a degree that the best place to be at all times was second place, Andretti still had a positive, above .500 record on every superspeedway where he led, and still had a higher lead change percentage than any other driver who led five or more superspeedway races naturally other than Tomas Scheckter, Greg Ray, and Adrián Fernández, the latter two of which did not come close to him in the number of races led. He was clearly a more dominant superspeedway driver than any of his contemporaries. Al Unser, Jr. and Bobby Rahal both did not come close to leading as many races naturally and both had negative lead change records while Andretti's was positive. While Andretti certainly had an equipment advantage over them, I don't think that likely explains the entire difference here. Even Rick Mears doesn't really come close to Andretti here in either races led naturally or lead change percentage, although granted some of Mears's best seasons from 1979-1981 are not yet counted, and he will probably be closer if/when I count those seasons, which do have a lot of YouTube representation (a lot more than the contemporary NASCAR seasons did.) Andretti did actually lead more laps at the Indy 500 than Mears did even though Mears won the race four times and Andretti never did, so this result does seem to be consistent with that. Basically, just like nobody from the 2000s and 2010s really compares to Kanaan in terms of superspeedway dueling ability (although Hornish may have had he stayed, and Wheldon may have had he not been fired by Ganassi), Kanaan's former boss appears to have an even larger advantage over his contemporaries than Kanaan does over his. If you ignore Fontana and Michigan (which were skewed by the fairly unrealistic Handford drafting), Andretti's lead change percentages look amazing: 4-1 at Homestead (including passing Alex Zanardi for the win in an era Zanardi had unquestionably faster cars), 8-3 at Indy (easily the highest percentage among those who led regularly there), 1-0 at Motegi, and 2-1 at Pocono.

Tomas Scheckter is I suppose the biggest positive revelation here. Although he never really fulfilled the potential of his 2002 rookie season when he dominated the Indy 500 before crashing late (although he actually never led that race naturally, nor did Kanaan, the other most dominant driver in that race, as they only took the lead on pit stop exchanges) and won at Michigan driving for Eddie Cheever, he remained exceptionally competitive on these tracks at least through 2005, when they dominated the schedule. Despite his abysmal 2004, Scheckter factored regularly on these tracks in 2002, 2003, and 2005. While he did have a reputation for crashing far too much, like his father Jody did in his early Formula One career, he also, much like Marco Andretti, had notorious bad luck and didn't win nearly as often on these sort of tracks as he should have based on his actual performance on these tracks would indicate. However, Scheckter was a lot more impressive than Marco, especially in 2003 and 2005. In 2003, Scheckter led seven superspeedway races naturally for the Ganassi team, including leading the most laps at the Indy 500, while his teammate Dixon only led three races on this track type naturally, and won the championship. Scheckter was fired because he went winless in a season Dixon won the championship, but at that point, Scheckter's dueling ability was actually much superior and he probably should have gotten more chances than he did. However, after his completely lackluster 2004 replacing Sam Hornish at the Panther team, his early potential was almost entirely forgotten. Despite that, he came back significantly in 2005, as he led five superspeedway races naturally and was the TNL three times (at Motegi, Texas, and Fontana), but still only won once at Texas. While his part-time teammate Buddy Lazier did match him on consistency, he was nowhere near as dominant. Scheckter's dueling on this track type is so impressive he comes close to rivaling Josef Newgarden for the best lead change percentage over the entire period, and he was far, far better than his mere two wins would indicate. Clearly his career deserves a second look, although admittedly he was not too impressive on any other track type.

Other drivers who seem to be particular standouts are Kenny Bräck, who was second to Kanaan in the number of tracks where he led with ten (largely because he managed to be dominant on ovals in both CART and IRL, which had different ovals on the schedule), Marco Andretti, who is generally mediocre elsewhere but is really unlucky to have not won an Indy 500 at this point considering he is tied for fourth with six races led there behind only Kanaan, Castroneves, and Dixon, and ahead of drivers with more legendary reputations like Al Unser, Jr. and his father Michael (although Michael had a far higher lead change percentage), Ryan Briscoe (who had a fairly significant positive percentage here, which is noteworthy when all the other IRL Penske drivers other than Hornish did not), Fernández (clearly a superspeedway specialist, but he had one of the greatest lead change percentages of all time and still had a positive lead change record at all five tracks where he led), and Greg Ray (who clearly benefited from exceptionally dominant Menard cars after replacing Tony Stewart at the Menard team, but it's worth noting Stewart despite going on to become one of the greatest duelists in NASCAR history actually doesn't come even close to Ray, although Stewart was exceptionally more dominant on the short ovals, where I do think talent comes to the fore more.)

Drivers who disappointed include Al Unser, Jr. (who I have always thought to be a supremely overrated oval driver, as he certainly got fairly lucky in both of his Indy 500 wins and didn't factor on the other superspeedways anywhere near as often as his reputation would indicate, but he did face an equipment deficit in some of his Galles years; it's pretty bad that he never won on an oval naturally except in his dominant championship seasons, and that it took him eight years to finally do so, when even Dario Franchitti and Will Power, who had much weaker oval reputations in their earlier careers, actually won on ovals sooner), Bobby Rahal (who it seems like I probably overrated on my top 100 list), Ryan Hunter-Reay (primarily because he didn't really stand out compared to a lot of his Andretti teammates like Kanaan and Marco, yet seems to have a reputation far closer to Kanaan's than to Marco's), Paul Tracy (whose eight races led seems pretty paltry given how long his career was, and given that he did compete in the Handford device CART races), and especially Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi, who had even fewer races led than Tracy (although Mario certainly didn't if you count his earlier seasons.) These drivers all mostly seem to be inflated from the '80s onward primarily because of their road racing ability, which allowed them to get into the best cars on ovals, but they definitely weren't anywhere close to the best duelists on them.

Short ovals

This list seems to be considerably more balanced as a measure of oval greatness than the previous list, because while CART was largely road and street course-centric in the years included while IRL/IndyCar was largely superspeedway-centric, both had roughly a fairly constant number of short oval races, usually about two or three most years, so it's probably easier to make direct comparisons here than on the superspeedway list. The early IRL probably still had more short oval races than any period of CART/Champ Car, but it was still a lot closer and more balanced than the other lists will be with regard to reflecting both sides fairly equally regardless of split politics. Just as on the superspeedway list, Michael Andretti was the most dominant force on short ovals of his era and possibly all-time, but his level of dominance relative to his peers is nowhere near as much as it was on the superspeedway list. Although I criticized Al Unser, Jr. for being an overrated oval driver, his lead change percentage of 13-7 is the best among drivers who led ten or more races naturally, and he was particularly strong at Milwaukee where he had a 7-3 lead change record. Andretti had lead changes right around .500 at all tracks, so he wasn't nearly as dominant a duelist on these tracks as he was on superspeedways, although still a positive one. Paul Tracy had a very similar lead change record on these tracks to Andretti as well, although he didn't have quite the longevity on them.

The late-split IRL drivers once again showed well on this list but were nowhere near as dominant here as they were on superspeedways. Nonetheless, four late-period split IRL drivers, Sam Hornish, Dario Franchitti, Tony Kanaan, and Hélio Castroneves held the next positions in the top five as far as races led. Despite being typecast as a superspeedway driver, Hornish was actually the best short oval duelist of his generation, with more races led than any of his contemporaries and an impressive 18-10 dueling record, only trailing Unser, Jr.'s 13-7 record among those who led short oval races often. It is particularly impressive Hornish is leading all his contemporaries in this category considering that he had a shorter IRL career than those drivers, Scott Dixon, and Dan Wheldon did, although to be fair he faced less competition in 2001 and 2002 than those drivers did in later seasons. Admittedly, some of the tracks where he led such as Gateway, Nashville, Pikes Peak, and Richmond stopped holding races either shortly before or shortly after the split even ended, so there were many fewer short oval races in later seasons (usually only Iowa and Milwaukee.) Regardless, Hornish was undeniably impressive on this track type and more than was really realized considering people noticed his superspeedway dueling more when you consider that other drivers who seem to have greater reputations on these tracks were behind him despite having longer careers.

Although Dario Franchitti was fairly disappointing on superspeedways, he was definitely impressive here and he had much more oval greatness on the short ovals than the large ones, which is definitely to his credit since these tracks likely do require more talent to be competitive on them, as the driver is probably more likely to play a role here even at an equipment deficit (admittedly, Franchitti rarely in his competitive seasons had an equipment deficit, but I digress.) His teammate Tony Kanaan was not really much worse but did have a rather smaller lead change percentage, indicating Franchitti was better at staying in the lead when he took the lead, while Kanaan tended to get out-dueled on these tracks a bit more. Both certainly were excellent. By contrast, Hélio Castroneves again had another substantially negative lead change percentage on the short ovals, but to his credit, he did lead on more individual short ovals than any other driver, as he was competitive on them in both CART and IRL, while Kanaan and Franchitti tended to struggle on these tracks more until their IRL years. Once again, Scott Dixon appears much lower on this list than I would have guessed considering he had a longer and more consistently competitive career seemingly anywhere than these other drivers. I would have expected Dixon to have at least 15 races led naturally just like his contemporaries who had similar length or shorter careers, so his ranking here looks particularly disappointing. Dan Wheldon's looks even more so. While the other five major drivers of his era (Hornish, Franchitti, Kanaan, Castroneves, and Dixon) appeared highly on this list, Wheldon only led four races naturally despite competing during the same heyday as Kanaan and Franchitti in the same equipment, and both of them had positive lead change records while he did not. Since Wheldon was also considered a lackluster road and street course racer, he appears to be the most overrated driver of this period. Wheldon wasn't necessarily awful on any track type, but his superspeedway dominance was far, far more impressive than his dominance on short ovals, which is something that drivers like Hornish, Kanaan, Franchitti, and even Castroneves can't say. It appears that Wheldon was clearly the worst of these six drivers (although he definitely was one of the best superspeedway drivers of his time.) My initial instinct was that Hornish in particular was the driver who was most associated with dominance on superspeedways and only on superspeedways, but it appears that would be more accurate for Wheldon.

A lot of the other earlier IRL drivers appear exceptionally well here, even if they didn't on the superspeedway list. Despite only competing in 25 IRL races, Tony Stewart managed to lead nine races naturally on this track type and posted a strong 12-8 record. While Greg Ray seemingly actually outperformed him on the superspeedways, Stewart considerably outperformed Ray at 4-11 here. This leads me to prefer Stewart's IRL career even if in some ways Ray's IRL career actually looks stronger (because he actually managed to beat Kenny Bräck for the championship while Stewart did not, for instance.) I mean Stewart was always more talented than Ray at everything, but I always had trouble taking his pre-NASCAR career as seriously as I perhaps should have because Ray seemingly quickly replicated his results. The fact that he was dominating at tracks where the driver was more paramount while the other Menard drivers weren't likely indicates in a sense that he was doing more with his equipment than he could have been, and that obviously carried into his NASCAR career where he was an exceptional duelist everywhere. Kenny Bräck's 8-3 record is one of the most impressive among any drivers, and once again his being almost equally competitive in CART and IRL oval races meant he led at a fairly wide range of tracks for how short his career was. This again backs up my earlier conclusion that Bräck is definitely one of the most underrated IndyCar drivers of the last 20 years. Although Buddy Lazier's career is too often criticized, his 8-5 record here is good, and better than his 18-16 on superspeedways, which makes sense because he actually faced an equipment deficit in his IRL years, which is often ignored because people like to sneer at the period in general without bothering to separate the wheat and the chaff in that period. Eddie Cheever at 6-3 and Robbie Buhl at 5-1 were also stellar duelists in the early IRL period. Roberto Guerrero may have had a brief prime and may have had a career ruined by injury, but before his injury, his 6-2 lead change record on these tracks is fairly spectacular.

A lot of the major CART stars on the other hand not earlier mentioned look surprisingly lackluster here. Mario Andretti's 7-8 isn't bad but definitely disappointing, but bear in mind that this is only starting from when he was 42 years old. Emerson Fittipaldi's 8-7 is a bit weaker than I was expecting also. Bobby Rahal's 6-11 is a lot weaker than I was expecting, as I tended to associate him with short oval dominance just as much (he was after all the last driver to lead a race start-to-finish at Phoenix, but it's worth noting he wasn't even the TNL there as polesitter Michael Andretti had a mechanical problem before the race started.) Rick Mears was always more associated with superspeedway dominance than short oval dominance, and his 14-18 is a bit disappointing, but there's a chance he might go positive if I count his very earliest seasons. Danny Sullivan's 3-4, Arie Luyendyk's 2-5, Al Unser's 1-3, and Alex Zanardi's 0-1 are also definitely worse than I would have expected for any of those drivers. Although Zanardi at least had a relatively short career, Will Power and Simon Pagenaud have been around a while. I'm not at all surprised Pagenaud failed to take the lead on a short track naturally, but considering Power had an incredibly dominant win at Milwaukee and has seemed to be in the mix more on these tracks, it was fairly shocking that Power has never made an on-track pass for the lead in a short track race. Yes, Power did dominate that Milwaukee race so that would technically be one race led naturally, but I chose to exclude races where the driver was the TNL but did not make a pass for the lead on track in this analysis, particularly because there were so many road and street course races that had no passes for the lead. I don't remember if this is the same way I ruled in the NASCAR analysis or not, and eventually if I redo this, I will make sure I am consistent in both analyses. However, regardless of which races should or should not count, it is clear many of these particular drivers were not as good on ovals as their general reputation.

In recent years, the two most overwhelmingly dominant drivers on short ovals have been Ryan Hunter-Reay and Josef Newgarden. Those drivers have been the most spectacular duelists on the short ovals in the 2010s with Hunter-Reay posting a 5-0 record and Newgarden posting a 6-1 record (and although I didn't count any 2018 races, the Phoenix race last weekend would now bring him up to 7-1 with his winning pass of Robert Wickens there.) While both of them were negative duelists on superspeedways, it probably says a lot to both of their benefits that they were much better on this track type, especially Newgarden. Hunter-Reay spent most of his time driving for Andretti Autosport when his teammates often weren't any worse duelists than he was on superspeedways or sometimes better. While Hunter-Reay incredibly stood out on this track type, he did not really stand out over a lot of his Andretti teammates, including Tony Kanaan, Marco Andretti, and Alexander Rossi on superspeedways. Newgarden however clearly stood out on short ovals even when he had an equipment deficit, nearly lapping the field at Iowa in an Ed Carpenter car in 2016 despite being injured less than one month earlier and earning a 2-0 record at Gateway last year, both times passing his Penske teammates of Power and Pagenaud (however, since neither of them has yet made an on-track pass for the lead on this track type, that may not be saying much.) Both Hunter-Reay and Newgarden had large and significant gaps between their ability on this track and any other, and they both had the highest lead change percentages among any drivers with as many races led as they had, while their teammates generally did not come close. This is the main reason why Newgarden actually has the highest lead change percentage of any driver with ten or more races led among all drivers since 1982 (and also had the highest lead change percentage each of the last three seasons, four in a row if you count 2018 as well), even though he still has a negative lead change percentage on superspeedways because he had an equipment deficit in his earlier career. Newgarden does seem to generally be the best oval driver today though and I think that will likely be reflected on the superspeedways just as well as the short ovals pretty soon.

It does seem overall that American drivers tend to be the best short-track duelists in terms of lead change percentage while the foreign drivers struggle (obviously there are some exceptions like Kenny Bräck's great oval dueling record and his onetime boss Bobby Rahal's weak record.) Obviously, there is more depth in road racing competition internationally than there is in the United States. As road racing came to dominate the IndyCar schedule in recent years as many ovals have declined in attendance and NASCAR became regarded as the premier oval league, this made foreign drivers more valuable, which gave them the opportunity to drive stronger cars. This allowed many foreign drivers to dominate rather quickly on the superspeedways simply because of the dominance of their equipment, but several foreign drivers do seem to be somewhat exposed here like Wheldon, Zanardi, Power, and Pagenaud indicating that they may never truly have mastered the discipline of oval racing in general, and are vastly overrated oval racers based on the strength of their equipment at their peak. I was not expecting such a strong separation between the US and foreign drivers on this list, but it does seem to largely exist, and that may explain why a lot of the early IRL drivers appear better than I thought they would and a lot of the CART and recent IndyCar legends appeared worse. Obviously the IRL drivers did face much shallower fields as well and also made more short oval starts, but it does seem to provide evidence that some road racing experts are clearly overrated on ovals because they got to drive stronger cars because of their road racing dominance. I'm finding Wheldon and Zanardi the most overrated by this perspective at the moment because Wheldon appears to have only been strong on superspeedways while Zanardi's road racing dominance is what gave him the strongest cars on ovals (indeed, Zanardi won only two of his CART races on ovals) but his road racing dominance itself is vastly overrated considering he was dominated by teammate Ralf Schumacher in Formula One. This does particularly make drivers like Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan and Kenny Bräck look impressive here because they managed to buck the dominance of North American drivers on this list.

Natural road courses

While Scott Dixon came out to be a fairly overrated oval driver (much to my surprise because it didn't feel that way watching the races) he is definitely one of the greatest drivers on the natural road courses that IndyCar racing has ever seen. His staggering 11-1 lead change record is the greatest lead change record seen in any discipline with a significant number of races led. He has taken the lead on track to lead at six different road courses, which no other driver since 1982 has done. Granted, the schedule in the past couple decades has had far more races come and go than in the previous decades, where the few natural road courses on the schedule were traditional venues like Laguna Seca, Mid-Ohio, Portland, and Road America, which remained on the schedule for a long time, but nobody seems to come close to Dixon in any regard on this track type. The only driver to ever pass him on a traditional road course was Will Power at the 2012 Barber race, and he too has a reputation as one of the greatest IndyCar road racers of this generation (although he was much, much more dominant on street courses than on road courses, while Dixon was much, much more dominant on road courses than on street courses.) Dixon and Power actually both have negative records on the other type of road course despite leading the lists on their preferred kind, which means that road course success and street course success are definitely not one and the same, so maybe grouping them as two separate entities is indeed justified. Road courses definitely seem to reward speed more while street courses reward precision more (i.e. not making mistakes.) Dixon is so much better at natural road course racing than he is at any other discipline that maybe it's unfortunate he never got a Formula One shot (Dixon is certainly one of the most balanced drivers of his generation, but not quite as balanced as I once thought he was.) Road course series seem to be where Dixon's talent would be most rewarded, especially since F1 seems to have a higher percentage of road courses and a lower percentage of street courses among the non-oval races than does IndyCar.

None of Dixon's contemporaries really come anywhere close to him on his list, as the remainder of the list is generally dominated by the titans of CART, with this serving as a particular area of expertise for Michael Andretti, Bobby Rahal, and Al Unser, Jr., who dominated IndyCar racing from the mid-'80s to the mid-'90s. All three of them had exceptional road course records and each of them had winning lead change records at three or four road courses and a losing lead change record at the other where they competed. They did about as well as they could have done considering there were a couple fewer races in this category in the heyday of CART (usually four) than there are today (lately usually six.) There was a bit more of a skew toward street racing in CART's heyday and a bit of a turn back towards more traditional road racing today, which probably elevates Dixon a bit more relative to his predecessors. Still, I am more impressed with Dixon because he thoroughly dominated all his contemporaries (and did so mostly against post-split fields), while the differences between Andretti, Rahal, Unser, Jr., and Tracy were not all that large. I do think Tracy was a bit less impressive than the other three since he had the benefit of competing in the late Champ Car seasons against very weak competition when he was one of the few drivers with major longevity who was still in his prime, although Tracy did beat for example Sébastien Bourdais, who for all his dominance, only took the lead on track to win three races (largely because in many of the races he dominated he had also won the pole.)

Bourdais's contemporary Justin Wilson seriously deserves a shoutout though. Despite having a shorter career than Bourdais and in weaker cars, he managed to take the lead on track in five different road course races, which places him in much higher company than one would expect, and that seems consistent with his 2009 win at Watkins Glen being one of the most impressive wins in that decade, since he took a then-career-winless in 20 years Dale Coyne team to victory. Lately, Coyne wins have seemed almost commonplace particularly since Bourdais took over the team, but that race was a big deal at the time. Despite having a relatively short career and an equipment disadvantage over a lot of people, Wilson is ahead of an awful lot of legends on this list, and particularly some people you would not expect him to beat like Juan Pablo Montoya, Emerson Fittipaldi, Bourdais, Will Power, and Hélio Castroneves. This does continue to support my earlier opinion of him as one of the most underrated IndyCar drivers of all time (but not the most, which I think would be Billy Winn.) His 2009 Watkins Glen win was almost on the same level as Josef Newgarden's 2016 Iowa win as a best-of-decade kind of performance (Newgarden had slightly stronger equipment but he also had to overcome an injury, which Wilson did not.) Unfortunately, nobody ever gave Wilson the opportunity to drive a premier car like Newgarden had, so we won't know just how dominant he might have been everywhere (not merely natural road courses) in a merged IndyCar, but where he is on this list is certainly impressive enough.

Speaking of Newgarden, he once again is a standout on this list. In 2017, he made brilliant passes of Will Power at Mid-Ohio and Hélio Castroneves at Road America (before being passed by Dixon on a restart), and despite only really having three years in competitive cars, and only one year in a seriously competitive car, he has already matched and/or surpassed drivers with much bigger road racing reputations like Simon Pagenaud and Will Power as a road racing duelist, even though they have more experience, and much more experience in top cars. Newgarden is clearly the best duelist of his time in general (although he has not yet taken the lead on track on a street course, lucking into both of his Toronto wins to date.) The only reason I think Newgarden is a negative superspeedway duelist is simply that he had slower cars, but I think that will likely change in future seasons, as one would expect Penske to have several more years with the most dominant superspeedway equipment (after having a bit of a deficit to the Andretti and Ganassi Hondas in recent seasons.) Besides Newgarden, other drivers who were particularly impressive duelists were Juan Pablo Montoya (3-1; well, he did make it to Formula One), A.J. Allmendinger (2-0; although his dominance in 2006 was during a particularly weak season for Champ Car), and Mark Blundell (2-0; also a solid F1 driver.) However, generally, except for the drivers who led five or more races, there are extremely small sample sizes here, as most drivers led far too rarely to significantly judge them positively or negatively in terms of on-track leading on road courses.

Regardless, there are some drivers who came out worse than I was expecting and foremost among these is Dario Franchitti. I once thought natural road courses were his forte, but shockingly, he never took the lead on one in his entire career and posted a 0-2 record. Franchitti did win poles on tracks like this fairly often, but he never actually made an on-track pass for the lead. Admittedly, during the late '90s and early 2000s in CART there were extremely few lead changes on track on most non-superspeedway venues, as most races ultimately came down to strategy races. Then when the IRL started adding road courses in 2005, there were still relatively few passes for the lead, and from 2005-2007 Franchitti despite seeming to be the most vastly experienced and talented road racer in the field based on his previous results actually went winless on both road and street courses (while for instance his teammate Kanaan, not recognized for his road racing ability at all, still did have a couple passes for the lead on road courses.) Franchitti, like Bryan Herta on a lower level, was certainly an exceptional qualifier on road courses, and exceptional at maintaining the lead after winning a pole until pit stops, but like Herta or Simon Pagenaud, never seemed to come through on this type of track when he didn't win the pole unless he got lucky on strategy. Considering Dixon has a startlingly impressive road course dueling record, and Franchitti was not lacking for equipment, it is downright shocking he has never taken the lead on track on a natural road course, but it is true.

Besides Franchitti, some other drivers appeared worse than I would have figured, including (again) Hélio Castroneves (3-7), Alex Zanardi (2-3), Jacques Villeneuve (1-2; despite being a Formula One champion immediately after his F1 career, his only road course pass for the lead was actually a debatable/controversial one as he took the lead 3-wide on a restart at Road America in 1994 after leaders Al Unser, Jr. and Paul Tracy made slight side-by-side contact breaking their momentum; I counted it but I would have at least expected Villeneuve to have something more impressive than this if he became an F1 champion not long afterward), Cristiano da Matta (0-1), Nigel Mansell (0-1; but not too surprising because four of his wins were on ovals and one on a street course), Gil de Ferran (0-2), Bruno Junqueira (0-2), Ryan Briscoe (0-3), and Teo Fabi (0-4). Honestly I expected more from all of these drivers considering they did win on road courses, but apparently only won on pit stop exchanges and/or races they led start to finish. Granted, as you can see here, road course passes are a rare thing to begin with compared to superspeedway passes, but a lot of the biggest legends still showed fairly well. It says a lot for the scarcity of passing on these tracks (even relative to street courses) that a guy like Newgarden, whose period of relevance only just recently started, is already in the top ten ahead of many legends. One can argue that more recent drivers have benefited from spec racing and more equal cars throughout the field, but honestly judging by the high rankings for the CART pre-split drivers here, I think spec racing and more equivalent cars may have made passing harder, not easier (it's easier to make a pass if you have an absurdly dominant car.) This tends to make recent drivers like Dixon and Newgarden look more impressive to me because they are bucking the trend of road racing passes being a rare occurrence. When only six drivers since 1982 have five or more races led naturally on road courses, and even Nigel Mansell, Gil de Ferran and Dario Franchitti aren't among them, I think it says a lot when somebody like Newgarden in 2017 can actually take the lead on a natural road course more than once (he was the first to actually do that since Justin Wilson in 2009; I don't count Simon Pagenaud in 2016 because I count his winning pass of Graham Rahal as incidental due to Rahal's car being damaged at the time of the pass.)

Street courses

Although you'd think passing would be more common on road courses and less common on street courses, that turns out not to be the case at all. Even though street courses are much more narrow with ostensibly fewer passing zones, there tend to be more races per year on street courses than on natural road courses and particularly there tend to be far more cautions in these events, which ends up making more of a difference. Because there are no runoff areas, almost any crash on a street course pretty much results in a caution and restart, while many natural road course races tend to have very few cautions, which means drivers tend to dominate start-to-finish with most lead changes only taking place in the pits. As a result, street course races turn out to be more competitive even though it is harder to pass simply because the number of cautions leads to endless opportunities for passes on restarts. I split the '80s Miami street course and the 2000s Miami street course into different categories, and I did the same for the CART-era Denver course and the Champ Car-era Denver course. For some reason, I did not split the two Houston races into different columns, but I have spent so much time already on this and the table itself is already so long that I am not going to adjust that at the moment, but I may at some later date. As I mentioned on the road course section, Scott Dixon looked exceptional on natural road courses but kind of lackluster on street courses, while Will Power was the exact reverse. It's not like they aren't both dominant forces on both, but Power seems to dominate road races only when he wins the pole but is definitely more impressive actually dueling at a street course, while Dixon seems to not be as good coming from behind on street courses. It is theoretically harder to pass on them, but I have just explained why that might not be the reality.

Despite being the most dominant qualifying threat on both road and street courses in IndyCar for many years, Power still has to come from behind quite often on street courses and has proven pretty exceptional at doing so, having led 18 races naturally, more than any other driver with a quite solid record of 19-13. Power's particular highlight is his lead change record at Toronto at 5-0, the best single track lead change record for any driver anywhere. That doesn't mean he was overall the best street course driver or duelist at all, since the top of this list is fairly evenly matched. Paul Tracy was the most versatile street racer, leading on ten different street courses, more than any other driver, en route to an 18-11 record that is slightly better than Power's. However, Tracy had the benefit of competing in the later weaker Champ Car seasons that tended to have new street course races rotating in and out and weaker competition than Power, Michael Andretti, or Al Unser, Jr. faced. While I would not say Michael Andretti was the best driver in this specialty, he was one of the best here just like he was in every other discipline, with an 18-14 lead change record and seevnteen races led, albeit over a smaller number of tracks.

I think I'd have to agree with the general consensus though that says Al Unser, Jr. was the greatest street course driver ever. Despite how hard it is to pass on street courses and despite that Unser, Jr. was not renowned as a particularly strong qualifier with only seven poles to his 34 overall wins, he managed to be one of the most prolific winners of all time on this type of track with six wins at Long Beach, where he garnered the nickname "King of the Beach." I find Unser a generally overrated oval driver but his short oval record was better than I was expecting, so it is probably more correct to call him an overrated superspeedway driver. His 17-9 lead change record however was better than any other driver with five or more races led except for Alex Zanardi's staggering 7-2 record on this track type. Unser's Long Beach record of 6-1 in particular justifies his tremendous hype, although interestingly his ex-teammate Tracy's 6-2 record there wasn't much worse. Clearly this was the best discipline for both Unser and Tracy both, and although Unser's dueling percentage and generally poor qualifying results make him look more impressive to me, I don't think he is so far above Power, Andretti, and Tracy to argue that he is the singlehanded king of street course races, but I do think he was probably the best.

What I tend to find most shocking here is how different the road course and street course results are, especially for the more modern drivers. A lot of fans act like the two disciplines are the same and they should be counted the same, but the wildly different rankings (compared to how similar a lot of the oval rankings appeared on the NASCAR list) do seem to indicate these are capturing very different skills. For instance, while Dario Franchitti never made an on-track pass for the lead on a natural road course while his teammate Scott Dixon went 11-1, here Franchitti was 8-5 and definitely one of the more dominant forces of his generation while Scott Dixon was a rather disappointing 4-5. Alex Zanardi went 2-3 on road courses but was an exceptional 7-2 on street courses. Hélio Castroneves had losing records on all three other track types but was 11-6 here and definitely one of the best Gen-X drivers (much like Unser and Tracy, this seems to be Castroneves's specialty, but I wouldn't say he was as strong on them as either of those two.) Both Zanardi and Castroneves stood out particularly as disappointing at all other track types except for this one despite generally having the fastest cars in their heyday. A surprising percentage of the major drivers seem to have .500 records on one but not the other, which is not something I would ordinarily expect, and does suggest that these tracks should indeed be separated in terms of driver evaluation.

Other drivers who showed particularly well on street courses were Justin Wilson at 6-5 (especially considering the equipment disadvantages he generally had), Takuma Sato at 5-4 (ditto), James Hinchcliffe (4-2), Mike Conway (5-3), Nelson Philippe (a fairly amazing 3-0 for how short his career was, although I believe a couple of those passes were on green-flag pit cycles, and it's possible I might exclude those later), and Cristiano da Matta at 2-0. Drivers who disappointed included Sébastien Bourdais at 9-10 (who seemed to be much more dominant than that on street courses both before and after the split ended), Danny Sullivan (8-12), Gil de Ferran (5-6), Ryan Hunter-Reay (5-9), Simon Pagenaud (3-5), Rick Mears (2-6; although these showed up late in his career and were not particularly considered a specialty of his), Nigel Mansell (2-7), Jimmy Vasser (1-4), Jacques Villeneuve (0-1; although his pass of Bryan Herta at Cleveland is debatable, I didn't count it because it seemed like Herta had a fuel pickup problem or missed a shift or something), Dan Wheldon (0-1), and Scott Pruett (0-2). While a lot of the drivers who appeared poorly on the road course list are regarded as all-time legends, most of the drivers who appeared poorly on the street course list are not considered road racing legends (although I've got to say Mansell and Pagenaud are particularly surprising.) Although certain drivers like Scott Dixon and Sébastien Bourdais don't appear as well here as I was expecting, this list does seem to jibe better with who people in general think the best road racers are. Because street course racing tends to have more passing than road course racing, I would say it does seem to be a better measure of dueling talent in general; however, passing everywhere matters and because passing on road courses tends to be the most scarce (particularly in races with few cautions), natural road course passes seem like they should be the ones that are most celebrated.

Conclusions

Unlike the NASCAR lists (which all seemed to have a lot in common with each other), the IndyCar lists grouped by track type don't seem to have much of a common thread at all. Granted, NASCAR generally races at a bunch of different kinds of ovals, and oval racing by itself is vastly different from road racing, but even given that, there are significant differences here. For instance, the drivers who appeared exceptional on road courses in NASCAR also tended to appear exceptional on other track types, but that wasn't necessarily the same here at all. Furthermore, there seemed to be much less correlation between superspeedway and short oval ability in IndyCar than there was in NASCAR as well. This does lead me to the general conclusion that recent foreign-born road racers tend to be overrated on ovals. While most of the best superspeedway drivers also proved to be strong short oval drivers as well, invariably it seems that non-US drivers adapted to superspeedways more quickly than to short ovals, probably indicating that short ovals take more skill while superspeedways are car-dependent, but in an era skewed towards road racing, the best road racers get to drive the fastest oval cars. This simply makes sense because oval racing has reigned supreme in the United States for the most part while road racing has reigned in Europe and South America, meaning US drivers are vastly more experienced on the ovals. I tend to think the drivers who are therefore most underrated are those who performed strongest on the short ovals because that discipline seems to be the least valued, since road and street racing is worth more as a percentage of the schedule and Indianapolis is worth more as a percentage of the attention.

Even though I do probably value superspeedway dueling ability least of any of these disciplines, there is certainly a substantially larger sample size of superspeedway lead changes, making it likely easier to draw conclusions. I earlier judged Kenny Bräck to be arguably the most underrated driver of the period, and that still has basis here. Although he never took the lead on track on a street course, he had positive lead change records everywhere else, and led at a phenomenal number of ovals (both superspeedways and short ovals) despite having a very short career. Bräck was one of the leading exceptions to foreign-born road racers generally struggling on short ovals (as was seen with drivers like Alex Zanardi, Will Power, and Simon Pagenaud), but he also had several years in the IRL first before he arrived in CART, and that probably made a big difference in his case. Tony Kanaan is clearly underrated. Although people tend to hype him as just an oval driver, he was actually one of only three drivers along with Michael Andretti and Juan Pablo Montoya who had a .500 or greater lead change record on all four types of tracks. That is quite good company to be in. He certainly never led on road or street courses often, but he at least did better than contemporaries like Dan Wheldon and Sam Hornish. The main case for Kanaan's underrating however is indeed his oval dominance, which was much greater relative to his contemporaries than I don't think most others would have guessed. He led far more races on superspeedways naturally than most other drivers did (thereby explaining his 2004-06 dominance relative to teammates like Kanaan and Dario Franchitti) and he also led far more races at Indianapolis naturally than any other drivers did in the period. It is quite possible even when counting years prior to 1982, Kanaan still has a strong chance of leading both of those categories all-time, because there were fewer superspeedway races in earlier decades and fewer on-track passes in earlier Indy 500s. Kanaan had such a massive advantage on superspeedways despite having at times an equipment disadvantage. While he wasn't as dominant on short ovals, he was still strong, although here Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish appeared to be slightly stronger. Hornish also appears to be underrated since much like Kanaan he is considered a superspeedway-only driver, when oval-only might be more accurate. Justin Wilson is clearly underrated when you consider how strong he appeared on both road courses and street courses (he only did not appear stronger on ovals because he did not have cars capable of competing on them.) Josef Newgarden is actually underrated considering he is the best duelist in the last 35 years in IndyCar history but I don't think most people would guess that. Although Newgarden has yet to lead on a street course and has a negative lead change record, his 6-1 short oval record and 3-1 road course record are amazing considering how short his career has been, particularly how short his career in strong equipment has been. Tomas Scheckter, much like Dan Wheldon, was one of the most exceptional drivers on superspeedways of that era of the IRL, but lackluster at all other disciplines. However, Wheldon is considered a legend while Scheckter is widely derided as a hack. There doesn't seem to be much of a difference between them except that Wheldon was luckier, had faster cars, and crashed less. Hence, I must find Scheckter (whose lead change percentage was very close to Newgarden's) underrated as well. It does appear some of the early IRL drivers, particularly those who did well on short ovals (such as Tony Stewart, Buddy Lazier, and Eddie Cheever) are a bit underrated and better than they are hyped. Cheever did pass Jacques Villeneuve at Nazareth for the TNL in his championship season in an A.J. Foyt car after all. While those drivers certainly weren't as talented as the CART championship contenders at the time, with the possible exception of Stewart, they were probably not as bad in their IndyCar years as they are regarded.

Based on these results, I probably still find Hélio Castroneves the most overrated driver of the last 35 years. Despite his major hype, he had negative lead change races at three of the four disciplines, although he is definitely an exceptional street course racer. Jacques Villeneuve is not far behind as he only made two passes for the lead in his entire IndyCar career, one of which was debatable (and was such an overrated oval driver that he was actually passed by Eddie Cheever at Nazareth in an A.J. Foyt car in his championship season for the TNL pass of the race) and went on to IndyCar and F1 championships; however, I tend to feel that Villeneuve is over-criticized considering he is the most popular choice as the worst Formula One champion in history and I don't think I agree with that, while Castroneves continues to be hyped as a legend by most IndyCar fans solely because of his Indy 500 wins even though his first two were not impressive at all, and even if his countryman Tony Kanaan was a far, far better Indy driver and oval driver in general than he was. Looking at things this way, I have to consider Dan Wheldon one of the most overrated drivers as well. He had a larger difference between his superspeedway dominance and his short oval mediocrity than any other driver of his era (while his contemporaries like Sam Hornish, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, Castroneves, and Dario Franchitti seemed to be equally strong on all kinds of ovals for the most part, Wheldon did not as he was generally only really good on the high-speed ovals, making him far more equipment-dependent than any of those drivers even if he did win an Indy 500 for a team that never won another race. I do think it's telling that Wheldon clearly lucked into his 2011 win though while Kanaan in 2013 managed to win an Indy 500 naturally with a rather mediocre car. Gil de Ferran and his protege Simon Pagenaud both look overrated here as Pagenaud did not manage to earn higher than a .500 lead change percentage on any track type and de Ferran only managed a .500 lead change record or higher once, but admittedly that came on short ovals, certainly making him more impressive than a superspeedway specialist like Wheldon is. Bobby Rahal and Scott Dixon are overrated on ovals, but certainly not on road/street courses, where Dixon was easily the most impressive road racer of the entire period. Few drivers showed to be that overrated on road or street courses besides those already listed, but Sébastien Bourdais did seem slightly overrated on both and Hélio Castroneves, Dario Franchitti, Will Power, and Alex Zanardi are all overrated on road courses, but strong enough on street courses to make up for that.

Clearly almost all drivers on the IndyCar list had particular strengths and weaknesses to a much greater degree than on the NASCAR list and there were very few drivers who one could argue had really mastered all disciplines. A large part of this may be explained by the fact that during the split, certain series had significant oval or road course skews, meaning that drivers who rose through the ladder particularly in the later years of the split will only be strong on the track type that was more predominant in their initial series. It probably explains why stars whose first IndyCar experience came in IRL cars such as Kenny Bräck, Sam Hornish, and Dan Wheldon were particularly lacking in balance between ovals and road courses, while the same holds true in reverse for some drivers who came up through Champ Car like Will Power and especially Simon Pagenaud. Having said that, in each case there are some very real surprises as really few tracks except for superspeedways have enough lead changes in general to ensure that most stars will have led on one. Road courses in particular tend to have so few on-track lead changes probably because their runoff areas tend to allow for few cautions that even taking the lead in three separate road course races on-track is actually a fairly big deal. It's clear that when evaluating lead changes, the superspeedways are far more heavily weighted than any other track type, when it doesn't seem that clear in NASCAR. Measuring dueling ability clearly matters far more for ovals than for road and street courses in general, if even some champions (even multiple times one like Dario Franchitti) have actually never taken the lead on-track on a road course. That doesn't mean the road/street course data tell us nothing, but what made Josef Newgarden and Tomas Scheckter the best duelists of the last 35 years was really their oval results (specifically superspeedways for Scheckter and short ovals for Newgarden, who now looks even better after his Gateway win.) However, it does mean I may not plan on doing a similar analysis for Formula One anytime soon, particularly because video footage is hard to find legally and road course passes are rare in races without cautions and also considering the aspect of waving teammates past for championship strategy, which tends to play a bigger role in Formula One than IndyCar road races. Overall, I think this analysis was more successful for NASCAR and would be for oval racing in general than for road racing, simply because the quantity of passes for most drivers, even elite ones, on the road and street courses may not be high enough to properly judge many drivers. Oval racing seems to be more about racing the other drivers while road racing seems to be more about racing the track. Both are certainly important in either discipline and there are certainly many interesting results here, but only the very top road racing duelists such as Scott Dixon seem to have a strong enough dueling record to justify noting. Street courses are generally a different matter because there are usually many more cautions and restarts, but here the problem is that most of them tend to be so fleeting on the schedule that comparisons between dissimilar street courses can indeed be apples and oranges, particularly when certain street courses only had a couple drivers lead on them naturally ever. I still think road racing passes are very important when they happen - maybe more important because each pass is more scarce - but I don't think producing tables is the best method to evaluate this, and I'd probably rather just compile lists of passes line by line. It was easier to aggregate the NASCAR list because of the consistency of tracks on the schedule and the fact that they were almost all ovals, but one could argue that the track types shouldn't be aggregated in the first place because track types are far more dissimilar in IndyCar than the track types in NASCAR. But that's why IndyCar fans love it.

Sean Wrona is the Managing Editor of racermetrics.com, the Webmaster of race-database.com, the winner of the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship at the SXSW Interactive Conference in Austin, and the ratings compiler and statistician for the Mensa Scrabble-by-Mail SIG. He earned a master's in applied statistics from Cornell University in 2008 and previously digitized several seasons of NBA box scores on basketball-reference.com. You may contact him at sean@racermetrics.com.

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