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Helio Castroneves ends full-time Verizon IndyCar Series career

By Brittany Frederick

ELKHART LAKE, WI - JUNE 24: Helio Castroneves, of Brazil, celebrates after winning the pole position for the Kohler Grand Prix IndyCar race at Road America on June 24, 2017 in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. (Photo by Brian Cleary/Getty Images)
ELKHART LAKE, WI - JUNE 24: Helio Castroneves, of Brazil, celebrates after winning the pole position for the Kohler Grand Prix IndyCar race at Road America on June 24, 2017 in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin. (Photo by Brian Cleary/Getty Images) /
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Helio Castroneves confirmed Wednesday that he’s stepping away from the Verizon IndyCar Series after two decades and three Indy 500 victories.

One of IndyCar’s biggest names won’t be on the grid for the 2018 IndyCar season. Helio Castroneves announced Wednesday that he’s calling time on his storied IndyCar career.

The news came via Team Penske press release, along with the long-expected confirmation that Castroneves is moving sideways to join Penske’s newly launched IMSA sportscar effort with his former IndyCar teammate Juan Pablo Montoya.

“I’ve been fortunate to achieve a lot of my personal goals with Team Penske over the years,” Castroneves said in the press release. “Helping Roger, the team and everyone with Acura start this program and build it from the ground up will be another big challenge and a great opportunity in my career.

“I am proud of everything we have accomplished together in IndyCar, and now I am focused on helping to develop the ARX-05 to try and win the 24 Hours of Daytona and the IMSA championship in 2018 with Acura.”

Castroneves will return to IndyCar as a one-off driver for the 2018 Indianapolis 500, but the news means that September’s GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma was the last race of his full-time IndyCar career.

It wasn’t a huge surprise — rumors of his IndyCar exit and move to the IMSA team had circled for months — but it is a huge development for Castroneves, IndyCar and its fans.

Castroneves is one of the longest-tenured regulars in IndyCar and certainly one of the most beloved. He has one of the league’s biggest personalities and is incredibly marketable, having been able to cross over into the pop culture mainstream, including winning a season of ABC‘s Dancing with the Stars.

On the racetrack, he’s put in 20 years of solid results, running up front in many races. While he came up fourth in his final bid to win a Verizon IndyCar Series championship, Castroneves leaves the series with three Indy 500 titles and 30 wins overall dating back to the Champ Car era, most recently in this year’s Iowa Corn 300.

The absence of Helio Castroneves will be felt both on and off the track in the 2018 IndyCar season, as he leaves as one of IndyCar’s best-known names and brightest stars.

His departure also continues to thin the car count for next season. Unless Team Penske looks for another driver for Castroneves’ No. 2 entry, the team will contract from four cars to three. The only other four-car stable, Chip Ganassi Racing, has already announced that it will drop from four cars down to two next season.

New teams may arrive to fill the void, but fans are seeing the powerhouse organizations of the league start to slim down a little bit, and the drivers themselves are starting to turn over from that stable of known names to newer faces. So will Helio Castroneves’ exit affect the sport in that way as well?

Whatever happens, the good news for motorsports fans is that Castroneves may be leaving IndyCar, but he’s not retiring.

He’ll still be competing, and the additions of him and Montoya will certainly draw eyes to Team Penske’s IMSA effort. Hopefully Castroneves will find the same success there that he did in the Verizon IndyCar Series.

Next: Josef Newgarden wins 2017 IndyCar championship

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