On Sunday, we learned that Dennis Reinbold had passed away at the young age of 65. I will admit, that I was totally unaware that Reinbold had been battling cancer for several years. I was in a press conference back in May, where Reinbold was at the stage. It occurred to me he had aged, but I never thought he looked sick. It serves as another example of how short and precious life is.
As most of you know, Dennis Reinbold was the owner of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing (DRR), which carried the same name as his string of successful car dealerships – with Dreyer being the last name of his grandfather.
In my opinion, Reinbold was one of the last of the pure racers left in IndyCar. Sure all of the IndyCar team-owners are racing through the love of the sport; but Reinbold, Dale Coyne and AJ Foyt are those that are in the sport when their finances would suggest they do otherwise.
During The Split, I always sided with the CART side; but I understood (some) of the motivation behind the formation of the IRL. It was formed for people like Dennis Reinbold.
Although Dreyer & Reinbold were not charter members of the IRL, like PDM Racing or Bradley Motorsports – they were the lone survivor of teams that originated during the IRL days, which I call the years 1996-2002. By 2003, too many CART teams had migrated over and the merger had unofficially already begun, before becoming official with unification in February of 2008.
Dreyer & Reinbold ran their first race in 2000, winning their debut race at Walt Disney World with part-owner Robbie Buhl behind the wheel. I’m not sure if that is a commentary on DRR or the strength of the IRL. To date, that is still their only IndyCar win. Buhl finished eighth in points that first season. The team never finished that high in points ever again. By 2002, the team was fielding a second car for Sarah Fisher. Although Fisher ran three fewer races than Buhl that season, she only finished one spot behind Buhl in points.
For the next several seasons, DRR trudged along with at least one car in every race, most times two. In 2009 and 2010, DRR ran four cars both years in the Indianapolis 500 – scoring only one Top-Ten finish between them; a seventh-place finish in 2010 by Justin Wilson. By 2012, DRR had scaled down to one car – driven by Oriol Servia. DRR ran the first five races of the 2013 season, but shut their doors after the Indianapolis 500 for the rest of the season. From that point on, Dreyer & Reinbold never contested an IndyCar race outside of 16th and Georgetown; but they continued to run the Indianapolis 500 each and every year through this past May. That was due to Dennis Reinbold’s love and appreciation for the Indianapolis 500 and its history.
I don’t point out the shortcomings of DRR to make fun of them. Instead I mean for it to be an illustration of how they continued to go up against the Roger Penskes and Chip Ganasssis of the world, in the face of insurmountable odds. That was what everyone loved about Dennis Reinbold, and the few remaining like him.
In the years since 2013, when DRR focused exclusively on the Indianapolis 500 – there have been years that they came close, and years that they were not competitive. That is just like any other team. In 2021, Sage Karam brought them a seventh-place finish. The next year, Santino Ferrucci earned a tenth-place finish for DRR. The last two years saw Dreyer & Reinbold really step up their game. Ryan Hunter-Reay came close to winning the 2025 Indianapolis 500, but he ran out of fuel and coasted to his pit late in the race. Like Alex Palou at Gateway last week, Hunter-Reay’s car would not refire. On paper, Hunter-Reay was credited with finishing twenty-first, but that doesn’t tell how close he came to winning that race.
This past May, DRR’s Conor Daly had one of the cars to beat. He had been one of the fastest cars all month, but he was not on the right fuel strategy and he finished an unimpressive twelfth.
It seemed that Dreyer & Reinbold was on the cusp of some type of merger or partnership with Juncos Hollinger Racing sometime later this season. For a couple of years, we kept hearing whispers that DRR wanted to get back to fulltime racing, or at least more races outside of the Indianapolis 500. How that would be affected with the charter system, and now the new rules preventing one-offs for any race other than the 500 was always a hurdle. Did those plans come to an end with Reinbold’s death? That remains to be seen. However, it is sounding like the group of investors that Reinbold had put together are wanting to keep Dreyer & Reinbold together and at least make another run at next year’s Indianapolis 500
Dennis Reinbold always dreamed of doing what Michael Shank was able to pull off in 2021 and 2026 – win the Indianapolis 500, while beating the biggest and best teams in the sport in the process. For the past 115 years, there have been countless small-budget owners that have had that dream. Very few have been able to pull it off. Dennis Reinbold came close. Had he been able to live another ten years, who knows if he could have done it?
Dennis Reinbold first came to the Indianapolis 500 following wins by owners Ron Hemelgarn and Eddie Cheever and the like. He ended up going toe-to-toe with Roger Penske, Chip Ganassi and McLaren and held his own. He wasn’t doing this to help his car dealerships or to fund next years racing budget. He was trying to win the Indianapolis 500 out of pure love and respect for that event. Now he is gone, and there is one less of a vanishing breed today – car owners that go racing out of a pure love for the sport. He was a true racer.
George Phillips
