One of the hot topics in IndyCar land post-Detroit has been Sage Karam. The 2013 Indy Lights champ did not have a good month of May. He was benched in favor of Sebastian Saavedra for the GP of Indy, got taken out on the first lap of the Indy 500, and spent most of the Dual in Detroit as a bowling ball. He sits 21st in points, and a 12th in the race Sunday is his top finish of the season. There have also been questions about his maturity after some questionable tweets and his blatant block on Takuma Sato on Saturday.
Now, I still think the kid has a lot of talent, and a lot of the immaturity is the result of a 20 year old with a lot on his plate. However, his boss is Chip Ganassi, and he won't hesitate to cut bait if things continue on this path.
I came up with the experiment for this post thinking of Karam's struggles as well as Tristan Vautier, the 2012 Indy Lights champ. Until this recent rebirth at Coyne, his IndyCar career had stalled, and until he showed this May, it looked possibly over. That led me to wonder how well an Indy Lights title correlated to success in IndyCars, including in comparison to the guys the champ beat that year. I went back throughout the history of Indy Lights in all its forms (American Racing Series, CART Indy Light, Infiniti Pro Series, Indy Lights current edition). Here are the results year-by-year (Note: As best as I can tell, I'm leaving it those drivers who graduated from Lights the year in question):
ARS Era
1986: The inaugural champ was Fabricio Barbazza, best known for finishing 3rd in his rookie Indy 500 in 1987, which ended up as his only 500 start. His 25 career starts is one of the highest in his class. The only 1986 driver with an IndyCar win was Billy Boat.
1987: The champion was Didier Theys, who was solid in his 47 career IndyCar starts, with 10 top 10's, followed by an accomplished sports car career. Jeff Andretti was the only other significant graduate in this class.
1988: Jon Beekhuis won the title, made 14 IndyCar starts, and is of course much more known for his fantastic broadcasting work. This year also saw another driver more known for broadcasting prowess compete, Calvin Fish (who finished 4th in the championship). The graduate this year with the most IndyCar starts is actually Juan Manuel Fangio II.
1989: In his fourth year in the series, Mike Groff takes the title. Groff was go on to make 66 starts. He spent 1993 and 1994 as Bobby Rahal's teammate during Rahal Hogan's unfortunate period of bad decision, but did go on to score 3 podiums in the early days of the IRL. None of the other drivers that contested a significant portion of the season moved up the next year.
1990: The champion was some guy named Paul Tracy. You might have heard of him. The only other graduate that year was Ted Prappas, who made 26 starts in '91 and '92.
CART Indy Lights Era
1991: Eric Bachelart was the champion. He went on to make 24 starts with backmarker teams, then start a backmarker team of his own in Conquest Racing. PJ Jones made the most starts of this class, with 60, including a 2nd at Nazareth in 1999 as his best finish. The class also included driver turned broadcaster Brian Till (20 starts).
1992: The champion was Robbie Buhl, who struggled to find his footing in CART (even going back to Lights in 1995) and but was a solid IRL regular for a number of years. He won twice in his career, at Loudon in '97 and at Disney World in 2000. He was not the most successful Lights graduate of 1992 though. That was clearly Adrian Fernandez, who made 194 starts, won 11 races, and was 2nd in the 2000 CART championship. Mark Smith, Marco Greco, and David Kudrave also graduated this year.
1993: Bryan Herta won the championship, and went on to make 179 starts, win 4 times, take 10 poles, and win the Indy 500 as a owner. He was the only significant graduate from '93, depending on how you feel about Robbie Groff and Franck Freon.
1994: Brit Steve Robertson won the championship, but never raced in IndyCar. Andre Ribeiro was the only graduate of any note from this year, although it must be noted this was the last of three years in Lights for Eddie Lawson. Lawson was best known for being a four time World Champion in motorcycles, and he did make 11 CART starts in 1996.
1995: The dominant champion was Greg Moore, who of course showed his tantalizing potential before his fatal accident. What might have been as he was on the cusp of joining Team Penske. The rest of the class (not counting the dropping down in class Buhl) included the first IRL winner, Buzz Calkins, and Affonso Giaffone, who made eight IRL starts with a best finish of 4th.
1996: David Empringham won the championship, and had previously won the Atlantic championship twice. How did he never get a shot at IndyCar? Not even one career start. This was just when I was becoming a fan, so I wasn't really in tune to how the ladder system works, but it was always a mystery to me. Those that did go onto IndyCar from this class were led by Greg Ray and Jeff Ward (he made 3 starts in Lights in '97, but we'll call this his graduate year). Ray was the 1999 IRL champion with 5 career wins. He started on pole for the 2000 Indy 500, but crashed twice and finished last. Ward was a motocross champ who had an underrated open wheel career, winning 1 race (2002 Texas June race) and scoring three top fives in the Indy 500.
1997: Your champion was Tony Kanaan by four points over second place Helio Castro-Neves, as he was known then. Their accomplishments are well known. No one else that may have concluded their Lights career this year are anywhere in the ballpark.
1998: Cristiano da Matta (who was third in '97) won the title and would go on to win the 2002 CART title and 12 races. The only other significant graduate from this year was the infamous Shigeaki Hattori.
1999: Oriol Servia won the title, and has been a solid IndyCar journeyman seemingly ever since. He has now made 196 starts with just the one career win (2005 Montreal) and 18 other podium finishes. He was 2nd in the 2005 Champ Car season (albeit well behind teammate Bourdais) and 4th in the points in 2011. The only other race winner in the class was Airton Dare, who won the 2002 Kansas race. Yeah, I forgot that too.
2000: The champ was Scott Dixon in a preview of what was to come. The other graduates were Felipe Giaffone (who did have one win at Kentucky in 2002), Casey Mears, and the late Tony Renna.
2001: Townsend Bell dominated the championship, and while he's made a nice career in sports cars, broadcasting, and Indy 500 one-offs, from what I remember, his career in IndyCars should have been much more than it was. This class includes the great and much missed Dan Wheldon. It also included long-time Champ Car vet Mario Dominguez.
Infiniti Pro Series Era
2002: The first IRL era champion was AJ Foyt IV, in what was only a seven race season. He was the only graduate from this year with any career of any significance.
2003: Mark Taylor won the title easily. He then raced one year in the IRL with a best finish of 7th. I completely forgot about Mark Taylor's existence. The easy winner of the graduate battle was Ed Carpenter.
2004: Thiago Medeiros won the title. His IndyCar career consisted of 24 laps at the 2006 Indy 500, where he started last and finished 31st due to electrical problems. Of those that competed in most of the races, PJ Chesson has the most IndyCar starts, with four.
2005: Wade Cunningham was the champion, but was stuck in IPS/Lights for another five years before finally making his big car debut in 2011. His IndyCar career was just five starts, making him another "What happened here?" case. Marco Andretti only competed in six out of the 14 races, but he's the class winner by default. You could also call this Jeff Simmons's graduate year, although he eventually made more Lights starts.
2006: Jay Howard won the title, and his quest for stability in IndyCars has yet to end. He didn't make his debut in IndyCar until 2008, and in the end made 12 starts with two potential Indy 500 starts taken from him from owners (either by firing him or making bad Bump Day decisions). He is only graduate from this year with an IndyCar start.
2007: Alex Lloyd won the title and scored a Ganassi development contract (sound familiar?). He couldn't get a full time ride until 2010 though with Dale Coyne Racing. That year he finished 4th in the Indy 500. It wasn't enough to keep the ride full-time, and after a partial schedule in 2011, that was it. He made 20 career starts. His class was led by Hideki Mutoh, who made 54 starts. The only other graduate with anything was Jamie Camara.
Firestone Indy Lights Era
2008: Raphael Matos went from winning the Atlantic Championship to the rebranded Indy Lights, where he won that title. It got him two full seasons and 38 starts as a whole. His best finish was 4th twice, as he could never harness the potential he showed in the lower formulas. He still wins the class battle, as he was the only graduate from this year to make it to IndyCar.
2009: JR Hildebrand won the championship. It took him two years to get a full-time ride in IndyCar with Panther. Of course that year we all know how close he came to winning the Indy 500. Panther fired him after he crashed on lap four at Indy in 2013, and it's been one-offs ever since. Those have at least kept the 27 year old in contention. He's made 44 starts in IndyCar, which is still enough to win the class. The only other competition is Ana Beatriz and her 29 starts.
2010: This is another year that made me wonder if it was better not to win the title. The champ was JK Vernay, who never made an IndyCar start and other than a Le Mans class win has been pretty quiet ever since. The IndyCar graduates from this year? James Hinchcliffe, Charlie Kimball, Sebastian Saavedra (the first time), Pippa Mann, and Martin Plowman. The first two alone make this the best class since at least 2001.
2011: Josef Newgarden won the title, and continues on the track to a good IndyCar career. No one else from this year has an IndyCar start except Stefan Wilson's sole start in the 2013 Baltimore Grand Prix (unless you count Bryan Clauson and Conor Daly, as this was their ride share year).
2012: Vautier won the title, got a full season at Schmidt the next year, didn't impress enough (and/or have enough money) to continue, and didn't show up again in IndyCar until last month. Second place for the second straight year was Estaban Guerreri, another "What happened to him guy?" So yes, this is another class win by default.
2013: The aforementioned Karam (the impetus for this post if you've forgotten) won the title, but the most impressive graduate this year has clearly been Carlos Munoz. Jack Hawksworth has also shown at least the potential to be a competent veteran going forward.
2014: Gabby Chaves won the title, and thus far is the only driver here to have made an IndyCar start. Obviously too early to make any conclusions.
So, going through all that, it's obvious that winning the top rung of the ladder doesn't guarantee anything. The only real stars came during the 1990s peak (Tracy, Moore, Kanaan, da Matta, Dixon). Overall, I count 14 years where the series champion ended up the most accomplished IndyCar driver in his class (although most of the IPS era ones it's by default). That's basically half the seasons. That's not bad given the other variables in racing that make it a more opaque analysis than it would be in a sport like baseball. Like baseball though if you took a look at the top prospects over the years (and in a kind of, sort of way the Lights champion = the #1 baseball prospect), you'd find some all-time greats, some busts, and everything in between. We found the same thing in this exercise. Like any sport, prospect watching is inexact, and no one ever knows what will happen when they hit the big time.
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