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As I watched Alex Palou take the stage after Sunday’s Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, I kept thinking how far he had come from his debut at Texas in 2020 when he was taken out by fellow rookie Rinus VeeKay. In less than sixteen months, he went from making his IndyCar debut in a hot pink and black car with no sponsorship on the sidepods in a car owned by Dale Coyne in association with Team Goh, to NTT IndyCar Series champion.

To be honest, I had never heard of Alex Palou until he was announced as driver of the No. 55 entry for the 2020 IndyCar season. That’s no real surprise, since I don’t follow any support or feeder series. I know I should follow the Road to Indy, but my attention span can handle only so much. I just wait until they make it into IndyCar, before learning anything about them. Note to self…I need to brush up on Callum Ilot before next season, since he has now been announced as the fulltime driver for Juncos Hollinger Racing for the 2022 season.

If I’m being more honest, I was shocked when Palou was hired by Chip Ganassi for the No. 10 car. The only reason that seat was vacant was because Felix Rosenqvist bolted for the No. 7 car at Arrow McLaren SP, in what I thought was a very curious move at the time. Rosenqvist had just won his first IndyCar race last season at Road America. He finished eleventh in the standings, but it seemed like things were coming together for Rosenqvist at Ganassi. This season, Rosenqvist finished twenty-first in the standings and is lucky to still have a ride for 2022.

Palou finished sixteenth last season for Dale Coyne. He had three Top-Ten finishes and one podium finish – a third-place finish at Road America. The rest of Palou’s 2020 season was non-descript with six finishes of fifteenth or lower. It wasn’t necessarily a bad rookie season, but it certainly didn’t scream that he should be picked up by the reigning championship team. When I first heard the hiring, I shrugged and figured it would end up about the same way that the Ed Jones hiring did for that car in 2018. That hiring was over in one season.

There is one common thread that runs between Jones and Palou – Dale Coyne Racing.

When Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) was formed in 1984, it was to give Coyne the driver, a place to race. He attempted to qualify twice for the Indianapolis 500, in 1988 and 1989. He failed to make most of the other CART races on the schedule, but finally made the grid at Mid-Ohio, where he finished fourteenth – in what ended up being his only race in 1984. Most of his 1985 schedule was made up of DNQs, as well. For 1986, Coyne even built his own chassis; the DC-1 but the results did not improve. In 1987, he bought a year-old March 86C. His two best finishes were a fifteenth at the Meadowlands, and a seventeenth at Road America.

1988 saw the first DCR driver not named Dale Coyne qualify for a race. Dominic Dobson qualified at Phoenix and finished twenty-sixth. In 1989, Coyne put four other drivers besides himself in his cars – Guido Daccò, John Paul, Jr., the legendary Fulvio Ballabio (that was sarcasm, by the way) and Ken Johnson.

Through 1990, it seemed that Dale Coyne’s low-budget operation was a haven for older drivers desperate for one last shot. Then in 1991, Coyne had a shift in philosophy – he would employ up and coming drivers that were just looking for a shot. Just a few of Coyne’s 1991 drivers included Buddy Lazier, Paul Tracy, Jeff Ward and Dennis Vitolo. One would eventually win the Indianapolis 500, two would win series championships, one would end up a fairly decent driver and one would become a punch line. I’ll let you decided who was what.

Over the years, Dale Coyne signed a lot of drivers – and I mean a lot of drivers to drive his cars. Some went on to great careers elsewhere, some had decent careers elsewhere and some faded into obscurity to never be heard from again.

Just some of the many names that drove for Coyne over the years included future team-owner Eric Bachelart, Johnny Unser, Robbie Buhl, Brian Till, Alessandro Zampedri, Franck Fréon, Christian Danner, Roberto Moreno, Michel Jourdain, Jr., Memo Gidley, Alex Barron, Tarso Marques, Darren Manning, Gualter Salles, Oriol Servia, Christian da Matta, Mario Dominguez, Katherine Legge, Bruno Junqueira, Mario Moraes, Justin Wilson, Tomas Scheckter, Alex Lloyd, Milka Duno, James Jakes, Sébastien Bourdais, Ana Beatriz, Mike Conway, Pippa Mann, Stefan Wilson, James Davison, Carlos Huertas, Tristan Vautier, Conor Daly, RC Enerson, Ed Jones, Santino Ferrucci, Alex Palou, Pietro Fittipaldi and Romain Grosjean. That’s probably less than half of the total drivers that have spent time at Dale Coyne Racing.

Just in the last few years, Dale Coyne Racing has served as a stepping stone for several drivers to move on to greener pastures. Justin Wilson moved to Andretti Autosport, while Ed Jones moved on to Ganassi. Just this year, Romain Grosjean parlayed his great season with a low-budget team, into a ride with Andretti Autosport. We already know what happened with Palou, after he spent the 2020 season with Dale Coyne.

My point is that Dale Coyne Racing is o longer the laughing stock that it was in the eighties and nineties. The team that sometimes struggled to answer the bell each season, won their first race when Justin Wilson carried the team to victory at Watkins Glen in 2009. Three seasons later, Wilson won again for DCR at Texas. Altogether, Dale Coyne has visited an IndyCar victory lane six times with four different drivers. The last win came in 2018 at St. Petersburg, with Sébastien Bourdais behind the wheel.

Dale Coyne has gone from funding a team so he could go racing himself, to a low-budget production with a revolving door of drivers that no one took seriously, to a team that can and occasionally does win races. No one will ever confuse Dale Coyne Racing with Penske, Ganassi, Andretti or McLaren; but performance-wise – I would put DCR in the same ballpark with Ed Carpenter Racing, Meyer Shank and possibly even Rahal, except that Rahal has won the Indianapolis 500 a couple of times and Sato has won a few times since Coyne has. But DCR is definitely ahead of Foyt, Carlin and Juncos.

Dale Coyne is often overlooked when it comes to IndyCar team owners. He’s not one for the limelight and would prefer to blend into the background. He doesn’t stage big productions with scantily clad women, like some bigger teams have in the past, to announce driver signings. His team usually just issues a press release, many times just days before the season starts.

Even though he may not be very visible, other teams have taken notice of the drivers he hires. I think Chip Ganassi used to see himself as having quite the eye for talent. He has plucked several drivers from obscurity over the years and placed them into his cars with mixed results. Nic Minassian comes to mind. I don’t think it is an accident that two of the last three drivers in the No. 10 car at Ganassi were hired directly away from Dale Coyne Racing.

Romain Grosjean was not an unknown quantity when he came to IndyCar from Formula One this past season. Still, no big-four team gave him a chance, even though they all had driver changes for additions or 2021 (McLaughlin, Palou, Rosenqvist and Hinchcliffe). Not every Formula One driver would even consider taking an IndyCar ride, much less a lower budget team. Credit Grosjean for not having too big of an ego, and for taking a ride with a mid-pack team. Like Palou, he has parlayed one year with DCR into a top ride in the series.

I’m glad that Dale Coyne has stuck with his team for close to forty years now. It would be easy to close shop after being a doormat for so long, and to put your time and money into something more profitable. But Dale Coyne is a racer at heart and does more with less, than any other team in the paddock. I think he brings a lot more to the NTT IndyCar Series than what people realize. I’m glad that other teams are noticing the racers that he is producing. It’s time he gets the credit he deserves.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on September 29, 2021 at 4:03 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.