2024 Frontstretch NTT IndyCar Series Awards

The 2024 NTT IndyCar Series season was a lot like its predecessor.

Alex Palou repeated as the champion, Josef Newgarden took home the Indianapolis 500 as the race’s first back-to-back winner since 2002, and his teammate Scott McLaughlin was the highest-finishing Team Penske driver in the standings. 

But there are a bunch of awards Frontstretch wants to hand out, so let’s go through all the categories and identify who is up for wins before ramping up for 2025.

Driver of the Year 

Well, this one isn’t that challenging. For the second straight year, it goes to Alex Palou. No shocker. He was the best driver all year, unchallenged by any of his foes in consistency and level-headed performance. In fact, one of his highlights during the season may have been his worst day on track.

At the second Milwaukee race, Palou left the grid with engine gremlins which seemed to put him out of contention. With one more race to go, this seemed like the Spaniard’s run of luck – only one DNF all year – was at an end. Nope. His crew incredibly got the issue addressed and he headed out 27th and finished 19th. While that may not seem like a big deal, the absolute fight in the team and his commitment to keep racking up positions on track shows his intense dedication. 

For the season as a whole, he won the title exactly how he did it last year: by stringing together incredibly consistent finishes and overcoming challenges, like Milwaukee, while his competition falters. He didn’t earn as many points this year, but he had 13 top fives, three more than points runner-up Colton Herta. Palou is forcing drivers to perform at mistake-free levels to come close to sniffing the title. Until others match that, he’s on a level all his own

3️⃣ Championships. 5️⃣ Seasons.@AlexPalou is a legend in the making.#INDYCAR // @CGRTeams pic.twitter.com/p24UYTU8cX

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) September 16, 2024

Driver of the Year (Not Named Palou)

Since there is a repeat winner this year, how about adding a second tip of the cap to another guy. The best of the rest honor for this year is the young rock-n-roller Colton Herta. 

The 24-year-old just finished his sixth full-time IndyCar season and earned his best championship result (second). It seemed one of the hold-ups for the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda was finding consistent results that would put him up front enough to challenge for victories. This year, that finally happened, starting with two back-to-back podiums which marked his best start of any season. Further, Herta was on a good tear until the Indianapolis 500, when he wrecked while running second. 

After a SNAFU at Detroit, the question was whether he could get back to wracking up good points days, and he did. At Toronto he vaporized a two-year winless drought, then at the season finale got the win with a gutsy pass on Pato O’Ward for his first oval triumph – more on that later. Had he not wrecked at Indy, his worst finish, he would have been lining up for at least a top five. 

Now that he has proven victorious on ovals, and the winds bringing rumors that Cadillac F1 is interested in his services, 2025 might be when he jumps one more spot in the standings.

Rookie of the Year

Of course, this goes to the actual IndyCar Rookie of the Year award winner, Linus Lundqvist. He showed a lot of promise with Chip Ganassi Racing, leading laps at Milwaukee and earning two podiums and two other top 10s, flashing the skills on road courses, street circuits and ovals. His teammate Marcus Armstrong, who completed all non-oval races last year, only finished 19 points and two positions ahead of him in the standings. 

A rise to remember.⁰
Linus Lundqvist is your 2024 #INDYCAR Rookie of the Year 👏 pic.twitter.com/KwlCqWkdnW

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) September 16, 2024

And yet, Armstrong is the one with the ride next year.

That’s right, the best rookie in the field doesn’t have a spot on the grid next year. Hopefully that changes before the green flag falls, but with only two seats left to fill, it’s getting hard to picture that happening. 

Comeback Driver of the Year

I went back and forth on this one, as I conversed with myself on what qualified better for a comeback — climbing out of a deep hole or having one of the best performances of your career?

For the former, that was Scott McLaughlin, whose disqualification at the St. Petersburg season opener put him at zero points on the year. The latter belonged to Santino Ferrucci who absolutely gelled further with his A. J. Foyt Enterprises team, grabbing two top fives and 11 top 10s, an impressive result for the No. 14 crew.

But, in the end, I went with the Thirsty 3s who jumped from basically dead last in points to finish third when the checkered fell at Nashville. The New Zealander was right when he won his first oval race at Iowa, proclaiming he felt like a real IndyCar driver. With his second straight third-place result in the standings, it’s not hyperbole. With a strong showing on all the ovals this year, including that pole at Indianapolis, he has started to put together the whole package. 

Consider this too – if he hadn’t been disqualified at St. Pete, his initial third place would have ensured 35 points in the championship. By Nashville, he finished 39 behind Palou. 

What could have been, if he might have been closer and applied more pressure to Palou? 

Honorable mention: Will Power deserves some kudos for returning to form after a dismal season in 2023, including earning the most victories he’s managed in a single season since 2018. However, I leaned more toward the finished product, with his teammate having a big gap to overcome.

Disappointing Driver of the Year

This is a toss-up. It is a struggle to put one of these names on here, because when you win the greatest race in the championship, and the world, it’s not really a disappointing drive. But let’s try it.

Newgarden’s repeat win at the Indy 500 earned him a huge payday, and he can stick all those Benny Franklins in his ears and make funny sounds in defense of this story. He can’t be disappointed now that his likeness is enshrined in immortality a second time. 

WHAT A FINAL LAP!

Josef Newgarden and Pato O’Ward battled to the end in the 108th running of the #Indy500. pic.twitter.com/0QqbcbnfYl

— INDYCAR on NBC (@IndyCaronNBC) May 26, 2024

However, he was very clear at St. Petersburg that he was focused on being a better all-around driver, to regain his consistency in all the various disciplines on the IndyCar schedule. Well, that didn’t come off as well as he had expected. St. Pete was an eventual nightmare, and the sense is it hung over him as the season got through the summer. A second win at Worldwide Technology Raceway at least kept his oval mastery label intact, but an eighth-place finish in the standings was his worst with Team Penske, and lowest since his third year in the series in 2014.

But the guy who gets this award is a driver who was challenged to make the Indianapolis 500 for the second year in a row, Graham Rahal. He finished outside the top 10 in points for a third straight year, had to experience the Last Chance Qualifier again, and unlike 2023 when he at least had a runner-up finish, finished no better than eighth on track. 

It’s been a consistent run of poor performances with the No. 15 crew, with Rahal needing some strong technical drivers to come in as teammates to assist with regaining top form. Unfortunately his seven-year winless drought doesn’t look to be changing much as rookie Louis Foster is taking over one of the seats, and the other will be filled by Devlin DeFrancesco, whose career results seem to favor the theory that his selection was more budgetary than performance-based. Otherwise, Lundqvist would have been a better fit in the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing lineup. 

Most Improved Driver

Let’s go with Santino Ferrucci here, since he didn’t win Comeback Driver of the Year. Not only was his ninth-place championship result the best for Foyt since 2002 with Airton Dare, but he also improved 10 positions from 2023. That Team Penske alliance has worked out well for Foyt’s team in its first full year.

Race of the Year (Not Named Indianapolis)

The finish to the 2024 Indy 500 was a classic. Enough said, right? That one will stand the test of time, and the event itself will stand out due to its rain delay and late finish. 

But out of the rest of the season, which race put on a great show? How about the two Milwaukee races? The problem is I can’t pick one over the other, as the first one was a great race in the cooling skies and the second one an intense, attrition-strewn show as all eyes watched Palou climb up through the grid. So, both get the nod, with the title of co-champion. If IMS could give co-rookie of the years to Michael Andretti and Roberto Guerrero, then we can too.

Returning to Milwaukee was one of the best stories all year, and it was a great two days of racing. 

Best Pass for a Win

This is a new addition to the awards. Throughout the year, drivers will be remembered for races won, but sometimes its forgotten how it happened. So here, let’s throw one particular moment out that was the best pass – either on track or strategy call — that won a race.

The two in mind are the last lap pass at Indianapolis by Newgarden and Herta’s use of traffic to get around O’Ward at Nashville. The stakes are higher at Indy, as the teams all want to win there. So I really can’t go against that, as Newgarden has proven to be adept at overcoming the weave maneuver and making it stick on the outside, something O’Ward couldn’t do in 2022. The win for this one goes to Newgarden.

But honorable mention to Herta, who smartly used the lapped car of Sting Ray Robb to go around on the inside of him and O’Ward to take the lead with five laps to go. It provided a thrilling finish to the banked oval finale. 

The pass that sealed it 💪#INDYCAR // @ColtonHerta pic.twitter.com/Wdr88cpyWj

— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) September 16, 2024

Drama of the Year

Sorry to Team Penske, who ended up on the positive end of many of these, they earn this one every bit of the way. The embarrassing start to the season with the push-to-pass controversy followed the series’ owner and his team for the rest of the year. While Roger Penske continues to be adamant that he is focused on running IndyCar while maintaining a hands-off approach to his on-track operation, it’s hard for the paddock to accept that when he visits victory lane every time they win. 

The drama called into question every decision and result for the team before and after St. Pete. But, both Penske and Newgarden went to great pains to apologize for their mistakes, with the Captain talking to owners in a private huddle after the news was released, and the driver addressing the media at Barber. 

It was one of the lowest moments thus far in Penske’s tenure owning IndyCar, and hopefully, only more positive things will ensue.