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Heading into the race weekend at Mid-Ohio, second-year driver David Malukas caused something of a stir when he let it be known that he did not intend to return to Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) for the 2024 season. Actually, it wasn’t that much of a stir since Malukas is currently nineteenth in points; while his rookie teammate Sting Ray Robb is twenty-seventh – trailing two drivers that have missed at least one race.

It has been a very quiet season at Dale Coyne. DCR is not among the top-tier teams, or maybe not even the second-tier. But Dale Coyne has found some success in IndyCar, ever since the open-wheel reunification of 2008. This is a team that goes all the way back to 1984. They entered ten races that season with three different drivers, and only qualified for one – Mid-Ohio with Dale Coyne as the driver, where he finished fourteenth.

DCR had some very lean years in CART, and that’s being kind. They were a perennial backmarker until the later Champ Car years, with Bruno Junqueira, Mario Dominguez and Oriol Servia turning in decent results. The team earned it’s first win in 2009 with Justin Wilson taking the checkered-flag at Watkins Glen. Wilson won again at Texas in 2012. Since then, Coyne has won races at Belle Isle (Mike Conway in 2013), Houston (Carlos Huertas in 2014) and twice at St. Petersburg (Sébastien Bourdais in 2017-18).

There have been several podium finishes recently for DCR – most recently at Worldwide Technology Raceway (WWTR) last season, when then-rookie David Malukas finished second. Many feel that had the race lasted a few more laps, Malukas may have caught and passed Josef Newgarden for the win.

This little history lesson is to remind everyone that Dale Coyne Racing has had success, and quite recently. This season, however, it has all gone terribly wrong. The best finish this season for Malukas was fourth at Texas, followed by a sixth-place finish at Mid-Ohio. Other than a tenth at St. Petersburg – it has been tough sledding for Malukas this season. It’s been even worse for Robb, whose best finish is sixteenth at St. Petersburg.

Is it the team, or is it the driver. Many times, the answer to that question is both, but in this case – I put the blame mostly on the team. Coyne lost a lot of key people in key positions to other teams in the offseason. You can’t effectively replace quality personnel that quickly. Malukas finished sixteenth in his rookie campaign for Coyne in 2022, but he really came on strong in the second half of the season.

Malukas has impressed me with not only his driving ability inside the car, but with his demeanor outside the car. He comes across as modest and is not one to toot his own horn, but when he is asked a question – he gives a refreshingly candid answer, not a canned response to appease a sponsor.

When he finished a strong second at WWTR last season, I happened to be seated right in front of him during the post-race press-conference, and snapped the photo below. He was so thrilled and so passionate, you could feel the energy coming off of him. He was not trying to be cool or the old “act like you’ve been there before”, because he hadn’t. He was almost vibrating, he was so excited.

Malukas hasn’t been vibrating much this season. After his fourth-place finish at Texas when he anointed himself with the Little Dave moniker in a post-race interview – there has not been a whole lot to get excited over. Since Texas, Malukas has had finishes of 20th, 19th, 26th, 29th, 23rd and 27th before his sixth-place finish at Mid-Ohio.

David Malukas has now gone public that he has no interest in returning to DGR after his contract ends at the end of this season. He says he is pleased with the interest he has from other teams, but nothing has been decided.

That’s because this silly season seems much more complicated than others. There are potential seats opening up for 2024, at practically every team except for Team Penske. Their three-car line-up seems stable for at least one more year.

Some have Malukas penciled in at Andretti Autosport. With the potential backing of his father’s HMD Trucking sponsorship – I might have bought into the idea of Malukas driving the No. 29 car currently driven by Devlin DeFrancesco. Both would be bringing sponsorship, and Malukas is considered a much better driver. However, Andretti Autosport announced last week that they are shifting to a new business model, where all four cars would be piloted by drivers-for-hire; meaning that they choose drivers on ability and talent, and not who brings the biggest check. What a concept!

That means that not only is DeFrancesco out at Andretti at the end of the season, but they would likely be seeking a much more established driver – say Marcus Ericsson, for instance.

That brings us to Chip Ganassi Racing, where as many as three cars may be in play for next season. As it stands right now, I think Scott Dixon is the only Ganassi driver under contract for 2024. The Alex Palou saga has been well-documented. Going into this season, it was assumed that Palou would be moving on to Arrow McLaren in 2024.

With Palou running away with the championship at the moment, some are questioning why he would leave such a dominant team in order to move to a team that hasn’t even won a race this season. Others are speculating that he will move to a Formula One team that is not McLaren. If anything has been decided regarding Palou’s future, he is staying silent on the subject.

Alex Palou is not the only Ganassi driver with options for 2024. Marcus Ericsson’s contract is up at the end of this season. He is justified in maintaining that an Indianapolis 500 winner and a now-consistent threat to win the championship, should not have to bring his own sponsorship to the table. With Palou still a possibility for the Ganassi camp in 2024, Ganassi cannot commit anything for Ericsson at the moment.

It is assumed that Marcus Armstrong will drive the No. 11 car fulltime in 2024, but nothing has been confirmed. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that Ganassi confirmed Takuma Sato for the remaining oval races for this season.

With so much currently in flux at Ganassi, it’s highly unlikely that their driver lineup for 2024 will be the same as it is for this season. It’s quite possible that the No. 8 of Ericsson and the No. 10 of Palou will both have different drivers next season. I would pencil David Malukas into one of those spots.

Some might scoff at the idea that Ganassi would hire a Coyne driver. Don’t forget, he’s already done it twice in the past five years – with mixed results. In 2018, Ganassi plucked Ed Jones from Dale Coyne. It did not go well, with two third-place finishes being the best results on the way to thirteenth in the championship. Jones was gone the next season. But in 2021, Alex Palou moved from Coyne to Ganassi after a very unspectacular rookie season that saw Palou finish sixteenth in points. I’d say that has gone pretty well.

With Ganassi needing funding for at least one of those cars, I’d say he would welcome the HMD sponsorship to the team. I think ultimately, we will see a standalone HMD Racing team in the NTT IndyCar Series, like we now see in Indy NXT – but I don’t think they are there yet. Partnering up with a team like Ganassi could really pay dividends for everyone involved.

That’s my take on the David Malukas situation. I have little to no idea of the 2024 destinations for free-agent drivers like Palou, Ericsson, Helio Castroneves, Simon Pagenaud, Conor Daly, Romain Grosjean, Felix Rosenqvist, Jack Harvey or any other drivers on the 2024 silly season carousel. But I’ll be surprised if David Malukas ends up at another team besides Chip Ganassi Racing. Buckle up and stay tuned. This silly season will be a wild one.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on July 10, 2023 at 4:04 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.