Top 10 IndyCar drivers of 2024

10. Josef Newgarden

Overall: 8^th, 401 points

Indy 500: Winner

There was something a little off about Josef Newgarden’s 2024 season. And it’s really hard to say you’ve had a bad season when you come back with the Indy 500 crown, but everything else felt… well, off.

Retrospectively it started with a sour taste due to the Penske push to pass fiasco at St Petersburg, where software apparently left on the car from a test meant the team could use push to pass on restarts – a big no no. All the Penske cars were hit with some kind of penalty, but the stats showed Newgarden had been the worst culprit. 

Victory via a last lap pass at Indy was some sort of redemption, but between that win and his second of the season at the Gateway there were only three finishes inside the top 10. A horror show at Milwaukee ended any chance of another title and just about summed up Newgarden’s 2024. 

9. Linus Lundqvist

Overall: 16^th, 279 points

Indy 500: 28^th

Rookie of the year, and by a very large margin, already gathered his first IndyCar pole position at Road America and two podium finishes in his first season. Linus Lundqvist made a very impressive debut in the championship. 

Yes, the 2022 Indy Lights champion was handed a decent advantage by securing a seat with the expanded Chip Ganassi Racing, but so was Kyffin Simpson, and his highest finish was 12^th. Yes, he made some mistakes along the way, like trying to run four wide into Turn 1 at Indy and ending up in the wall, but three top ten finishes in the final five races was a better end to the season than some very experienced drivers.

He’s extremely unlucky not to have a confirmed seat for 2025 already, largely down to Ganassi’s decision to downsize back to three cars, but the chase must surely be on to secure the Swedish driver’s signature.   

8. Kyle Kirkwood

Overall: 7^th, 420 points

Indy 500: 7^th

No wins to follow up the two he took in 2023 will have disappointed Kyle Kirkwood, but it was a season of consistent improvement rather than standout moments for the 25-year-old. Kirkwood only finished outside the top ten four times in the whole season, the same number as champion Palou, and in a series that rewards consistency as well as speed, that will offer a lot of hope to the team at Andretti Global. Second in Toronto was the highlight, where he crossed the line pushing Colton Herta to victory, and he might be disappointed that there weren’t any more podiums. But he was the second-best Andretti Global car, soundly beating Marcus Ericsson and showcasing why the team believes he has a real future ahead of him.

7. Scott Dixon

Overall: 6^th, 456 points
Indy 500: 3^rd  

There were some truly “only Scott Dixon could do this” moments in 2024. But overall, it’s likely that it will be a season that the six-time IndyCar champion won’t spend too much time looking back on. 

Sixth with two wins is really quite mediocre for a man who has staked his reputation on such high achievement. But the win at Long Beach really should go down as one of the finest victories in the championship’s history. There, Dixon produced lap times equal to those behind him while also saving enough fuel to avoid an extra pit stop. It was truly mind-breaking stuff, the kind of drive that just sucks the motivation out of your opponents. 

Another win followed in Detroit, yet again involving stunning fuel saving, but Dixon’s luck seemed to desert him almost more often than not. Take his early exit from the Portland race, a victim of a really poor move from Pietro Fittipaldi after just a handful of corners. He’ll be back in 2025 (although he doesn’t have a contract yet) and hoping to show that even if he is now 44, his worst season since 2016 was just an off year.

6. Santino Ferrucci

Overall: 9^th, 367 points

Indy 500: 8^th

There are plenty of people (myself included) who find Santino Ferrucci’s attitude and behaviour often rather distasteful. But objectively, it’s extremely hard to say that he wasn’t one of the top performers in IndyCar this season.

Yes, there were plenty of those Ferrucci moments, particularly his frankly bizarre outbursts at Detroit. But the 26-year-old, handed another full season drive by A.J. Foyt, gave the long-time backmarking team its best overall IndyCar season finish, we reckon, since 2002. 

Ferrucci was in the mix for victory at Indy for a long time and bagged his first top five finishes since 2020 with a pair of fourths at Milwaukee. So, his team was understandably delighted with him by the end of a year which saw him improve by ten places in the overall standings. But we still leave the season with a sour taste in our mouths after his Detroit behaviour. It would be nice to see a more grown up Ferrucci in 2025.

5. Scott McLaughlin

Overall: 3^rd, 505 points

Indy 500: 6^th

Speaking of mature consistent improvers, Scott McLaughlin has been exactly that ever since he joined the championship full-time in 2021. 14^th in 2021 became fourth in 2022, which morphed into third at the end of 2023. McLaughlin was undoubtedly aiming for a real championship assault this year, but has to settle for another third, albeit with more points to his name.

Perhaps more important is the deficit. Yes, he was still third, but whereas last year the Kiwi sat 168 points behind Palou come season end with one victory to his name, in 2024 it was 39 points and McLaughlin had won three times. 

For the second year running he was the best finishing Penske driver, and if he hadn’t been taken out by his own team-mate in Toronto, he might have been second overall rather than third. The fact that his wins came on both ovals and street circuits is a boost to his hopes for a future championship. 

4. Colton Herta

Overall: 2^nd, 513 points

Indy 500: 23^rd

Are we being harsh, sticking Colton Herta all the way down here in fourth when he ended the season as runner-up and picked up two wins on the way? Possibly. But while there were finally signs that Herta is over his doldrums of the last two seasons, there were also some of the same mistakes that have plagued him.

Victory in Toronto was almost imperious, and his charge for victory in the last round at Nashville was spectacular to watch. It showed to all that the son of Bryan Herta wasn’t just a flash in the pan, a young driver who would achieve in his early years and then disappear. 

But there were also enough down days to drop him on this list. Take the Indy 500, where he pretty much had a tantrum, basically abandoning a perfectly workable car and having to be sent back out by his team. Ultimately the car only seemed to need a new nose…

But 2024 was probably his most consistent year overall, and if he can combine the late season speed with a full year of keeping his head straight, a title charge must be on for ‘25?

3. Pato O’Ward

Overall: 5^th, 460 points

Indy 500: 2^nd

Oh, Pato. How are we in exactly the same position again? And we don’t mean in championship terms, because on the end metrics the 2024 season was worse than 2023. But after a season away from the Winners Circle, the Mexican won three races in 2024 (yes, one of them was awarded retrospectively).

The same position? Being so close and yet so far. He was two corners away from winning the Indy 500, just not quite timing his pass on Josef Newgarden correctly and ending up on the verge of tears after a second runner-up place in three years. And he chucked away results on other occasions – like triggering the massive pile-up at Toronto that ended with Santino Ferrucci on his roof.

But it is the sheer distance between Pato and any other driver in a McLaren-run Dallara that sticks him so high on this list. He was the only Papaya-clothed driver to win a race in 2024, he ended the season with 94 more points than Alexander Rossi and spent the whole season at a team that seemed to be swirling with constant controversy that must have been off-putting for all the drivers. His run from Indy to Iowa seemed to show championship challenging potential, and even when it was falling down a little at the end of the season, he still managed to pull a win and a close second place out of the hat.

A more stable team is required for 2025, but Pato will be in the mix.

2. Will Power

Overall: 4^th, 498 points

Indy 500: 24^th

Going into the final race at Nashville, Will Power was the only driver who could actually (with a complex set of results) beat Alex Palou to the title. The fact that he ended up fourth in the championship after crossing the line 24^th does not reflect a season of recovery for the Australian that is far more impressive than it first looks. 

Firstly, that 24^th might suggest a bottle-job, but we all know Nashville was far from it. Power could have kept quiet and raced on when his belts came undone but, after the couple of years he’s had, you could see why the two-time champion chose to be sensible, sacrificing his championship chances for his safety. 

In reality, even if he doesn’t feel it right now, 2024 was a triumph for Power. The 2023 season had been a nightmare. Zero wins for the first time in 16 years and seventh in the championship is bad enough. But it was the root cause that really shows how good 2024 was. 

He spent the previous year helping to care for his wife, Liz, after she had spinal surgery at the start of the year. In fact, only later did we learn just how close Liz came to death that year. That Power even managed to race on and claim three podiums is a measure of his sheer, for want of a better word, willpower.

Back in 2024, he was determined. He nearly combusted when he was taken out in the second race at Milwaukee by his own team-mate, all but ending his championship hopes. But in time he should look at 2024 as one of his best seasons yet. No, he did not win the championship, but what a comeback. 

1. Alex Palou

Overall: 1^st, 544 points

Indy 500: 5^th

Perhaps this wasn’t a vintage Alex Palou year. He sort of stumbled across the line to take the title with finishes of 19^th and 11^th. But so incredibly strong had he been in the early part of the season that some were crowning him pretty much halfway through. And he’s spent the year battling a lawsuit that could cost him $30million (£22million).

This wasn’t a season like 2023, where he took five wins (which is ridiculous in a single season in IndyCar) and Chip Ganassi looked imperious, filling out three of the top six positions in the championship. Running five cars in 2024 seemed to push Ganassi beyond what it is really capable of producing. But Palou was still Palou. At times in the first half of the season, he seemed like those angels in Doctor Who which get closer when you stop looking at them. Each time you turned around, there he was, running in the top five. 

And that is what all IndyCar championships are built on: pure consistency. Palou didn’t finish outside of the top five in the first five regular-season races, and won himself a million dollars in between by walking to victory in the non-championship race at Thermal Club. In fact, across the entire season, he was outside of the top five just four times. 

It feels like Palou has completed IndyCar. And he also found his voice this year. After racing at Le Mans for the first time, he felt able to hit out at a 2025 calendar clash that would stop him doing it again. It’s a shame that he’s been embroiled in controversy over his will-he won’t-he move to McLaren, because seeing him in a Formula 1 car would be a delight. Since that won’t happen, IndyCar needs to enjoy watching the Spanish master at work. 

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.