Why A New Team In IndyCar Could Be More Important than McLaren

So, the recent headlines in the Indycar silly season have been about one of two things. 1) Colton Herta, his impressive performances, and his move to Andretti Autosport. Or, 2) McLaren buying Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (now Arrow McLaren SP). Obviously the other announcement linked to this is James Hinchcliffe's search for a ride after he was kicked out for Pato O'Ward and Oliver Askew (I secretly think he might get the second WAU seat in Supercars). However, digigng deeper, you see another new name on the team sheet: Team Goh.

Alex Palou's ride with Dale Coyne Motorsports was backed by Team Goh. It's probably not a name that many Americans know but there is some important background here. They were founded in 1996 to complete in the All Japan Sports Car Championship, and they won it with a McLaren. The same McLaren was entered in le Mans in 1997, followed by a BMW LM in 1999 and the Panoz in 2000. Team Goh ran Audi R8 LMP1s from 2002 onwards in the WEC and Le Mans, and got the big prize, the Le Mans victory, in 2004 with Tom 'The Master of Le Mans' Kristensen, Seiji Ara and Rinaldo Capello. The team then focused on Super GT for a few years before returning to Le Mans for one last time with a Porsche LMP2 in 2009, but Ara suffered a big crash. In 2019, the team was reborn as McLaren Customer Racing Japan and ran a 720S GT3 in Super GT with Ara and Alex Palou. Now they've backed Palou in the Indycar series. But why do I say this is more important than McLaren? It's a matter of heritage.

When we look at most current IndyCar teams, most are American. Carlin are British, McLaren are British and while DragonSpeed are American, the only reason they are there is their British driver Ben Hanley. If we look at history, we've had big figures from Canada (FAZZT), Britain (Lotus) and Mexico/Japan (Team Aguri-Fernandez Racing), but this year has the most, and they aren't just British. So, this is now the most international teams and they are from several different countries and cultures.

IndyCar has two advantages over F1 in my opinion; one, it's cheaper and two, it's closer. This is what makes it so attractive to these teams, just like how Formula E is attractive for manufacturers; they are able to take part in top level open wheel racing but they don't have to pay billions of dollars like in F1. And these facts are encouraging for them.