VICS: Verizon IndyCar Series Season Preview – CFH Racing

Leading up to the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series season, OnPitRoad.com will profile a different IndyCar Series team each week, reflecting back on last season and looking ahead to the new year.

Under a new team name with a new partner in the picture, Ed Carpenter is set to make the 2015 Verizon IndyCar Series season his most successful to date.

The Indianapolis native had his most successful season to date last year, scoring a victory and two podiums, finishing the year off with an average finish of 9.7 for his six series starts. Since debuting his own team, Carpenter has worked at slowly improving the team each year and the method has worked as in each event that he ran, he was in contention for the victory. He easily had one of the quickest entries in the Indianapolis 500, but a mid-race incident with James Hinchcliffe took him out of contention. Penalties and poor strategy hurt his runs at other events, but still a win at Texas Motor Speedway and a third to finish off the year at Auto Club Speedway mark great positives for the owner-driver.

Carpenter has always stuck to his guns of running just the oval races, feeling those are his strong suit and it allows him to focus on the ownership side for the other side of the schedule. The partnership worked out successful for him last year, as Mike Conway was able to win a pair of races and could’ve easily added more, but was taken out of contention either due to penalty, wreck or strategy circumstance.

Though now looking towards 2015, there are certainly a lot of questions, and change under the horizon.

An even stronger run with a possible two wins on the season for Carpenter is easily possible. Considering that he has gotten stronger with each season, it seems natural that it would be the next step. Beyond that, the signs were there considering that the speed was shown.

Though, also, Carpenter has another thing in his corner – a new partnership. Carpenter joined his team – Ed Carpenter Racing – with Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing to form CFH Racing. By joining the teams together, they can combine resources to make both entries stronger for the upcoming season. It starts with sharing what they’ve learned to date, to sharing information at future tests, and having more sets of notes to look over following each practice session during a race weekend. If the teams can gel well together right off the top of the season, look for both Carpenter and Josef Newgarden to have success.

Newgarden will run the full schedule, in search of a possible championship and first career victory. He had a solid season last year, posting seven top-10s throughout the year, including a season-high second-place finish at Iowa Speedway. Like the pair at ECR, though, Newgarden found himself at the short end of bad luck sending his season off-course with four crashes and two mechanical issues resulting in six DNFs on the season. Certainly with more experience under his belt, along with this new partnership, a stronger 2015 is possible.

Combining Newgarden and Carpente together should produce results, as both teams showed speed and posted good finishes throughout last season. Though potential doesn’t always equal results, and reaching potential also takes time. With a small team, small resources and budget, no doubt the research would take longer to find what they’re missing, versus the elites of the series. IndyCar is also changing the fold next year with the areo kits. As they say, two heads are better than one so why not increase the amount of people searching for the answer?

While small teams have excelled in the sport, it has been proven over the years that the bigger teams post the stronger results as they have more resources and money to rely on. Team Penske led the way this year with three cars, increasing to four in 2015. Chip Ganassi Racing has four cars with their alliances, and was right there with Penske. Andretti Autosport has always been considered one of the top teams, and they had four cars. Now CFH Racing increases their chances of joining those teams with their merger together.

The only wrinkle in the plans to date is Conway has announced that he will not be returning to the IndyCar Series in 2015, forcing Carpenter to find a new driver to share the No. 20 entry with. CFH Racing has yet to announce Conway’s replacement, though the announcement should be coming soon with the season set to begin in March.

Rumors have pointed towards JR Hildebrand getting the seat – the California native that has only one podium finish in 42 starts, and famously known for coming so close to winning the Indianapolis 500 in 2011. If the rumors are true, certainly the CFH Racing team will have to work with their young driver in improving his abilities to match the previous success the team has had.

There are also other drivers that could possibly get the seat, and it will not be easy as it may seem for CFH Racing to fill the seat. They have to find the perfect driver that can run well on the road/street courses, and find sharing with the ride with Carpenter. The driver also has to be able to work with the team engineer with ease, to mark an easy transition between drivers as we go throughout the year. If they can find the right balance, you may see another road/street course win in the future. Though if they can’t, it could be a long year of struggles.

However, with that wrinkle aside, it seems as though this combined team has the right pieces to be successful in 2015.