Soon to be out of a NASCAR job, could AJ Allmendinger return to IndyCar or IMSA in 2019?

By Sep 29, 2018, 2:12 PM EDT
All photos: IndyCar
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When JTG Daugherty Racing announced earlier this week that AJ Allmendinger will not be returning for a sixth full-time NASCAR Cup season with the team in 2019, many ‘Dinger fans wondered where the Los Gatos, California native would race next season.

Pretty much every NASCAR Cup ride is already filled for 2019.

Yet at 36 (he turns 37 on Dec. 16), Allmendinger is far too young to retire from racing. But if he can’t find a new ride in NASCAR, then what?

What if Allmendinger were to return to IndyCar racing or IMSA sports car racing?

It was in open-wheel racing that Allmendinger made his initial mark in four-wheel competition. In the CART/Champ Car World Series, Allmendinger made 40 starts, earning 14 podium finishes, including five wins in his final season (2006), when he finished third in the championship.

A.J. Allmendinger, left, finished second to Justin Wilson, while future NBC IndyCar analyst Paul Tracy finished third in the CART race at Mexico in November 2005. © 2005 Phillip Abbott/USA LAT Photographic

All five of those wins came on either permanent road courses (Portland, Road America) or temporary street courses (Cleveland, Toronto and Denver).

Then in 2013, he made a partial comeback to the IndyCar ranks for Roger Penske, competing in six races, including earning a seventh-place finish in the Indianapolis 500.

Sure, Indy cars are completely different today from what Allmendinger drove between 2004 and 2006 in CART/Champ Car, as well as in 2013 in IndyCar.

But with the proper amount of preparation and testing, Allmendinger coming back to IndyCar is not as far-fetched as it may seem.

After his five Champ Car wins in 2006, many Allmendinger fans likely wondered what might have been if he had remained in the open-wheel ranks. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that he could have eventually gone on to become an Indy car champion.

When Champ Car and the Indy Racing League merged to form IndyCar in 2008, Allmendinger would have been a great fit. However, he had already cast his lot with NASCAR, running a part-time Cup schedule in 2007 and 2008 before going full-time in 2009.

Since then, Allmendinger has just one win, 11 top-five and 55 top-10 finishes in 363 starts in the Cup series.

He also has two wins and three top-fives in 11 Xfinity Series starts, and two top-fives in 13 Camping World Truck Series efforts.

In addition to what he achieved in CART/Champ Car and IndyCar, Allmendinger has been an excellent sports car driver.

In nine starts in the former Rolex Grand-Am Sports Car Series, he had one win (2012 Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona) and three podiums. Then, in four subsequent starts in IMSA’s Weathertech SportsCar Championship series, he has one podium in four starts.

Allmendinger said in an interview Friday at Charlotte Motor Speedway that he has no intention of stopping racing.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “You make it sound like I’m dying up here. I just don’t have a job right now.”

Allmendinger and Michael Shank in 2017 during a practice session for the Indianapolis 500.

While Allmendinger could still potentially hook up with another Cup team, or an Xfinity or Truck Series team next season, it’s clear that one of his closest friends, sports car and IndyCar team owner Michael Shank, wants to see AJ racing.

For Michael Shank Racing, that is.

When news broke that Allmendinger would not be returning to JTG Daugherty next season, Shank took to Twitter.

“Besides being one of my best friends, (Allmendinger) is one of the best racing drivers in any type of car, period,” Shank wrote. “Not to mention he literally is one of the founding corner stones of Michael Shank Racing.”

But it was the next sentence in the same tweet that said a lot: if there was no room in the NASCAR inn for Allmendinger next season, he absolutely, positively has a home with Shank.

“You can bet your ass you will be seeing him on one of my cars in the future!” Shank added.

Allmendinger would make an excellent fit for MSR on the sports car side. He’s a road course racer at heart and by training.

Plus, he would be a strong addition to a series that not only has several outstanding drivers already, but in the last two seasons added former IndyCar drivers Juan Pablo Montoya and Helio Castroneves, who have become quite at home and successful in IMSA.

Why, it wouldn’t be surprising if Allmendinger even gets a one-off ride with Shank in his IndyCar operation with co-owner Jim Meyer (Meyer Shank Racing) for the 2019 Indy 500 with Englishman Jack Harvey as his teammate.

Sure, this is all speculation – if not wishful thinking – but one thing appears pretty clear: For a guy who doesn’t have a job yet for 2019, Allmendinger already appears to have plenty of potential options.

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IndyCar Detroit GP starting lineup: Alex Palou wins first pole position on a street course

By Jun 3, 2023, 4:00 PM EDT
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DETROIT — Alex Palou won the pole position for the second consecutive NTT IndyCar Series race and will lead the Detroit Grand Prix starting lineup to green on a new downtown layout.

The 2021 series champion, who finished fourth in the 107th Indy 500 after qualifying first, earned his third career pole position as the first of three Chip Ganassi Racing drivers in the top four (Scott Dixon qualified fourth, and Marcus Ericsson sixth).

Scott McLaughlin will start second, followed by Romain Grosjean. Coming off his first Indianapolis 500 victory, Josef Newgarden qualified fifth.

INDYCAR IN DETROIT: Entry list, schedule, TV info for this weekend

It’s the third career pole position for Palou and his first on a street course — a big advantage on a nine-turn, 1.645-mile track that is expected to be calamitous over 100 laps Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBC).

“It’s going to be a tough day for sure,” Palou told NBC Sports’ Marty Snider. “It feels good we’ve had a great car since the beginning, and it was just about maximizing. They did a great strategy on tires and everything. We need to finish it (Sunday).

“I got off a lot in practice. We wanted to see where the limit was, and we found it. It’s a crazy track. I think it’s too tight for Indy cars and too short as well, but we’ll make it happen.”

QUALIFYING RESULTS: Click here for Detroit GP qualifying speeds | Round 1, Group 1 | Round 1, Group 2 | Round 2 l Round 3

The narrow quarters (originally listed as a 1.7-mile track, its distance shrunk by a couple hundred feet when measured Friday) already were causing problems in qualifying.

Colton Herta, who has four career poles on street courses, qualified 24th after failing to advance from the first round because of damage to his No. 26 Dallara-Honda. It’s the worst starting spot in an IndyCar street course race for Herta (and the second-worst of his career on the heels of qualifying 25th for the GMR Grand Prix three weeks ago).

Andretti Autosport teammate Kyle Kirkwood also found misfortune in the second round, damaging the left front of his No. 27 Dallara-Honda despite light wall contact.

“I’m disappointed for the crew because that was a pole-winning car,” Kirkwood told NBC Sports’ Kevin Lee. “Man, I barely touched the wall. I touched it way harder in all the practices, and it’s just like the angle at which the wall was right there, it caught the point and just ripped the front off the car.

“If the wall was rounded, that wouldn’t have happened. That’s just unfortunate for the guys, but it’s my mistake. It’s hard enough to get around this place let alone race around it. We’ll see how it goes.”

Many IndyCar drivers are expecting it to go badly, which isn’t uncommon for a new street layout. The inaugural Music City Grand Prix in Nashville, Tennessee, was the biggest crashfest of the 2021 season with 33 of 80 laps run under caution plus two red flags.

It could be worse at Detroit, which is the shortest track on the IndyCar circuit. It also features the series’ only split pit lane (with cars pitting on opposite sides and blending into a single-lane exit), a 0.9-mile straightaway and a hairpin third turn that is considered the best passing zone.

“If there’s one day you need to be lucky in the year, it’s tomorrow,” Grosjean told NBC Sports’ Dave Burns. “A lot is going to happen, and it’s being in the right time at the right place.”

Said Dixon: “Expect probably a lot of unexpected things to happen. We’ll try and get through it. I think it’ll be similar to Nashville and maybe the last man standing is the one who gets the victory.”

With the field at 27 cars, Palou estimated the length of the course leaves a gap of about 2.4 seconds between each car, which he preferred would be double. During practice Friday, there were six red flags and 19 local yellows as teams tried to sort out the tricky and tight layout.

“I don’t know what the perfect distance is, but I would say adding 30 seconds to a track or 20 seconds would help a lot,” said Palou, one of many drivers who also said the streets were too bumpy despite work to grind down some surfaces. “We have a lot of cars. It’s crazy. It’s really good for the series, for the racing. But when it comes to practice, and we have 10 red flags, 25 yellows, it’s traffic all the time.”

It seems certain to be a memorable reimagining of the Detroit GP, which was moved downtown by IndyCar owner Roger Penske after a 30-year run at the Belle Isle course a few miles north.

McLaughlin, who drives for Team Penske, believes the race will be very similar to Nashville, but “it’s just going to be up to us with the etiquette of the drivers to figure it out along the way. I think there’s going to be a lot of passes, opportunities.

“With the track, there’s been a lot of noise I’ve seen on Twitter, from other drivers and stuff,” McLaughlin said. “At the end of the day, this is a new track, new complex. I think what everyone has done to get this going, the vibe is awesome. Belle Isle was getting old. We had to do it.

“First-year problems, it’s always going to happen. It’s just going to get better from here. The racetrack for the drivers is a blast. We don’t even know how it races yet. Everyone is making conclusions already. They probably just need to relax and wait for (Sunday).”

Here’s the IndyCar starting lineup for Sunday’s Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (qualifying position, car number in parentheses, driver, engine and speed):

ROW 1

1. (10) Alex Palou, Honda, 1 minute, 1.8592 seconds (95.734 mph)
2. (3) Scott McLaughlin, Chevrolet, 1:02.1592 (95.271)

ROW 2

3. (28) Romain Grosjean, Honda, 1:02.2896 (95.072)
4. (9) Scott Dixon, Honda, 1:02.4272 (94.862)

ROW 3

5. (2) Josef Newgarden, Chevrolet, 1:02.5223 (94.718)
6. (8) Marcus Ericsson, Honda, 1:02.6184 (94.573)

ROW 4

7. (12) Will Power, Chevrolet, 1:02.1817 (95.237)
8. (60) Simon Pagenaud, Honda, 1:02.1860 (95.230)

ROW 5

9. (6) Felix Rosenqvist, Chevrolet, 1:02.1937 (95.219)
10. (5) Pato O’Ward, Chevrolet, 1:02.2564 (95.123)

ROW 6

11. (11) Marcus Armstrong, Honda, 1:02.2958 (95.063)
12. (27) Kyle Kirkwood, Honda, 1:04.6075 (91.661)

ROW 7

13. (7) Alexander Rossi, Chevrolet, 1:02.5714 (94.644)
14. (21) Rinus VeeKay, Chevrolet, 1:02.1911 (95.223)

ROW 8

15. (20) Conor Daly, Chevrolet, 1:02.9522 (94.071)
16. (77) Callum Ilott, Chevrolet, 1:02.2644 (95.111)

ROW 9

17. (29) Devlin DeFrancesco, Honda, 1:03.0017 (93.997)
18. (45) Christian Lundgaard, Honda, 1:02.6495 (94.526)

ROW 10

19. (55) Benjamin Pedersen, Chevrolet, 1:03.1599 (93.762)
20. (78) Agustin Canapino, Chevrolet, 1:02.9071 (94.139)

ROW 11

21. (18) David Malukas, Honda, 1:03.2126 (93.684)
22. (14) Santino Ferrucci, Chevrolet, 1:02.9589 (94.061)

ROW 12

23. (06) Helio Castroneves, Honda, 1:03.3879 (93.425)
24. (26) Colton Herta, Honda, 1:03.4165 (93.383)

ROW 13

25. (30) Jack Harvey, Honda, 1:03.7728 (92.861)
26. (51) Sting Ray Robb, Honda, 1:03.7496 (92.895)

ROW 14

27. (15) Graham Rahal, Honda, 1:03.8663 (92.725)