Even before the unification with Champ Car, bringing the decade-plus schism to a merciful end, the on-track product was more entertaining, and more drivers had a chance to win races. At least nine teams—both Penske cars, both Ganassi cars, all four Andretti-Green cars, and Panther Racing’s lone entry—found their way into victory lane between 2005 and 2007.
Accounting for the fact that two drivers, Dan Wheldon and Marco Andretti, scored victories in Andretti-Green’s No. 26, a total of ten drivers accounted for these wins. For reference, the IRL had an average of 18 cars each of those years.
Meanwhile, 10 Champ Car drivers found their way into victory circles with six teams during that time frame—Sebastien Bourdais, Oriol Servia, and Bruno Junqueira with Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing; Nelson Philippe and Robert Doornbos with Minardi Team USA; Paul Tracy and A.J. Allmendinger with Forsythe Racing; Cristiano da Matta with PKV Racing; Justin Wilson with RuSport; and Will Power with Walker Racing. For reference, Champ Car also had about 18 cars per race in each of those years.
Accounting for the fact that Servia and Junqueira shared a car in 2005, 18 different entries and 20 different drivers won the 48 IRL races and 41 Champ Car races contested in the last three years. Adding Rahal, Danica Patrick, and Ryan Briscoe this season, 23 drivers have won the 96 races put on in total.
In that same time frame, eight drivers have won 54 Formula One Grands Prix: Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Giancarlo Fisichella, Lewis Hamilton, Felipe Massa, Juan Pablo Montoya, Kimi Raikkonen, and Michael Schumacher.
As Raikkonen replaced Schumacher at Ferrari and Alonso replaced Raikkonen at McLaren, those 54 wins have only occurred in seven different cars. Button’s win with Honda at the 2006 Hungarian Grand Prix was the only race of those 54 not to feature a Ferrari, McLaren, or Renault driver on the top step of the podium. After six races in 2008, no driver or team has added his name to this list.
Eight drivers in 60 races with four different teams; 23 drivers in 96 races with ten different teams.
The numbers don’t lie.
But are those numbers skewed by the fact that two open-wheel series existed in the United States at the time? Absolutely. One cannot assume that had the Champ Car World Series and Indy Racing league run a combined 18-race schedule in those three years, a total of 23 different drivers would have won races—although many of them would certainly have come close. (To mention the winners is to speak nothing of the drivers who have come close to victory. Vitor Meira, Tristan Gommendy, Dan Clarke, and Scott Sharp most readily come to mind.)
Yet of those 23 winners, the only defections have been Hornish, Allmendinger, and Dario Franchitti to NASCAR, and Bourdais to Formula One. Philippe, Doornbos, and Tracy are all actively seeking rides in the unified series. Da Matta is an exception to the rule - after nearly being killed by a collision with a deer in a 2006 testing accident, he is racing sports cars for Bob Stallings Motorsports.
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