With three races to go, there is still a chance, albeit an unlikely one, that would take several big, unexpected twists, that there could be a record number of winners in a Verizon IndyCar Series season.
The current record of 11 has been set three times – in 2000, 2001 and last season in 2014.
This season started with five different winners in the first five races, and seven in the first eight races. Two more drivers – Scott Dixon at Texas and Josef Newgarden at Toronto – joining points leader Juan Pablo Montoya on the list of repeat winners made beating the record unlikely. However, Graham Rahal and Ryan Hunter-Reay joining the list of 2015 winners at Fontana and Iowa respectively, means that despite Sebastien Bourdais also joining the list of repeat winners at Milwaukee, beating the record remains possible in these late stages of the season.
It would require, however, that the remaining three races of the season are all won by drivers who have not yet visited victory lane so far in 2015.
The potential list of candidates for contributing to this includes some impressive names, with multiple former winners yet to win a race this season. The most prominent among them is Helio Castroneves, still in championship contention despite not having visited victory lane thus far this season.
Other possible first time winners in 2015 include Marco Andretti, Tony Kanaan, Simon Pagenaud, Charlie Kimball, Sage Karam, Ryan Briscoe, Ed Carpenter and Justin Wilson.
However, Karam has said that the whole Chip Ganassi Racing team are focused on supporting Dixon's tilt at the championship, which reduces the chances of him, Kanaan, or Kimball joining the 2015 winners list, and given the impressive caliber of the drivers already on the winners' list this year, it seems unlikely that none of them will win another race before the season ends.
The absence of James Hinchcliffe due to his continuing recovery from the injuries he sustained in practice for the Indianapolis 500 in May means that the number of drivers who can prevent the record being broken has been reduced to eight, but they are all likely to be somewhere near the front in at least one of the remaining three races. Most prominent among them are championship-challengers Montoya, Dixon, Rahal and Will Power. The others are Bourdais, Newgarden, Hunter-Reay and Carlos Munoz.
It seems highly unlikely that none of those eight drivers will win one of the remaining three races, but as Montoya's early exit at Iowa showed, the unexpected can - and often does - occur in Indy car racing.
The record being equalled again would certainly seem more likely than it being outright broken, but even if no more drivers join the 2015 winners' list, nine winners in a season would still be a powerful indication of the competitive and open nature of the Verizon IndyCar Series.
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Emma Hoole is a writer for the VAVEL USA Racing section.