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INDYCAR: 2012 Driver Of The Year
Marshall Pruett asks 23 IndyCar drivers to pick the IndyCar Driver of the Year, which delivers some interesting opinions and results.
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted January 02, 2013  
Three drivers received votes from their peers for SPEED.com's 2012 IndyCar Driver of the Year. (Photo: LAT)
Selecting the Driver of the Year…the criteria involved with making that decision is subjective, and it’s not the same as choosing an MVP--the year’s best driver, is it?

The former has season-long implications—takes into account how each driver fared over the entire championship, while the latter turns a blind eye to the final standings and judges the individual talent that was on display.

As you’ll read below, ‘Driver of the Year’ means different things to the 23 IndyCar drivers assembled on our panel, but in the end, we did narrow in on the consensus choice.

The frank choices and detailed justifications most drivers offered also gave fascinating insights into how they view their rivals.

ALEX TAGLIANI: Ryan Hunter-Reay

As far as consistency and capitalizing on the opportunities, I would say Ryan did better than everybody else. You know, Will [Power] is quick, he's strong, you can't count him out, but I think it was his championship to lose and he lost it. Right? That's a pretty clear thing that happened there. But, I mean, I think Scott [Dixon], to me, was strong. From the beginning of the year he was really fast. But, man, in the top three guys, he was the one with the most bad luck. Like the situation in Milwaukee because I was racing with him all race long, he had a really good car to finish up and that penalty that was afterwards called as a mistake, I mean, it cost him 30 points, probably. He had a couple of bad lucks in the season that took him out of the contention for the championship, but I think he still was pretty strong.

I mean, I think that Ryan did a good job at really capitalizing when it was time to capitalize. And he was at the right place at the right time and basically scored massive points and shot him up to the top of the championship.

GRAHAM RAHAL: Scott Dixon

For me, I think it’s pretty simple. Without a doubt, I think Scott Dixon was the best last year. And, quite frankly, after being there with him for a couple of years, I've been more impressed by him than any guy I've ever driven with. Scott has the ability to put down an insane lap when needed. This year he was the best Honda consistently. He still had some bad luck, we all had some bad luck, but to me he is the most impressive guy on a consistent basis. A guy that can win races, a guy that can save fuel, a guy that can qualify. He's also just a down-to-earth, good guy.

Like I said, I've gained so much respect for him as a driver. And I've driven with a lot of good guys, Justin Wilson and Dario Franchitti and Sebastien Bourdais and all that stuff, but to me, Dixie really stands out. If he had had a little more luck on his side last year he would have been the champion. I mean, how he led most all the Indianapolis 500 just to get second… for the moment at the end, which was kind of a common theme for him, unfortunately. For me, I think he's the best.

SIMON PAGENAUD: Ryan Hunter-Reay

That’s a good, good question. Hmm. It really depends. Is the guy that won the championship the best? Or is it the guy that impressed me the most?

I was really impressed with Ryan Hunter-Reay because I think he went above the rest. I think he pushed his own limits. It was at the right time of the year. He believed he could do it, he believed it was possible. He believed in his team. And the team believed in him and the work they did to win all those races in the condition they did it was definitely another [version] of Hunter-Reay that we’ve seen so far. I'm not saying he didn't have the talent before, he did, but he’s just putting it all together. That's really impressive. But, again, I'm really impressed with his pace on the road course, it's just mind-blowing sometimes. But Hunter-Reay really impressed me for that reason, I have to say.

I was racing with him at Baltimore when he went for it. He really went for it. You have no idea. We were both pushing and he managed to do all that and win. That really impressed me because I knew how much push I was pushing. He stepped it up when he needed to.

JUSTIN WILSON: Ryan Hunter-Reay

I would say Ryan Hunter-Reay. I know he won a championship but he went out there and took it in those last few races. After he got hit by [Alex Tagliani] back in Sonoma, you’d say, “Okay, that's the season over for him.” And he took it, dug in his heels and came back and did some great drives. Not always the quickest cars, but he'd brought everything out that he could and I thought it was pretty impressive.

RUBENS BARRICHELLO: Ryan Hunter-Reay

I was impressed with how much Will Power was able to get the lap times up, he really impressed me. But then the way the championship resolved, I thought Ryan Hunter-Reay did a phenomenal job. He deserved the championship. It was a hell of a good championship; I thought there was a lot of very good drivers in the series.

TONY KANAAN: Ryan Hunter-Reay

Well, I have to pick Ryan Hunter-Reay. You know why? Because I know that team quite well and I don't think they had the resources that Penske and Ganassi did, and yet he made it happen. Actually, in the last race, he did not have the car at all.
I hate to pick the champion on that but I think it was obvious that they would pick either Will Power or one of the Ganassi guys doing the championship, and all of the sudden... I never heard anyone say in the beginning, “Yeah, Andretti will win the championship,” or... “No, Ganassi or Penske guys will win it.” Again, it was Hunter-Reay. He definitely made it happen on a very difficult year, and those two teams dominated it for so long.

SEBASTIEN BOURDAIS: Scott Dixon

Scott Dixon. It’s pure bad luck, [with the mistaken] penalty at Milwaukee and all that, he lost so many points not from being inconsistent, but from reliability and other stupid things. For me, he probably should have won the championship. But at the end of the day, he showed the world again how fast he is.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to take anything away from Ryan [Hunter-Reay] because he actually for sure had to reach deep down to get that championship and he deserves every bit of it. But on pure season analysis and if it's the same for everybody, it looks like Scott would probably have won it.

Even his overall package was involved because I think there are some positives and negatives and at some point it was better to be with Chevy and at some point it was better to be with Honda and it looks like at the end of the season, Chevy was back up on top again. But just on reliability, it cost him so much. Had he had Dario's reliability he would have won the championship. And it's the same engine and it's the same team so it's just pure bad luck. This was the first year since Dario came to the team that Dixon really moved ahead of him, which says a lot.
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