Oilpressure

Dale Coyne has always been good for keeping people in suspense. Sometimes he has gone as late as the opening weekend of the season, before announcing his driver lineup. Even then, some drivers have been announced as on a race-by-race basis – even if they end up staying I the car for the rest of the season.

In recent years, Coyne has gone against his own tradition and had his driver line-up announced in December. This season, he has chosen to go back to his old ways. As we approach the month of February, Coyne’s two-car team has the only remaining fulltime seats on the grid that have not been filled.

As usual, there are more available drivers vying for open seats than there are cars. Before signing with Juncos Hollinger Racing, I thought Romain Grosjean was headed back to Coyne after a tumultuous two-year stint at the team now known as Andretti Global. It was also assumed that former Andretti driver Devlin DeFrancesco was taking his large sum of cash to Dale Coyne Racing (DCR). Recent reports, however, say that his large sum of cash is no longer as big as once thought.

Now that he is obviously not in AJ Foyt’s plans, many are thinking that Benjamin Pedersen may take his financial package to Coyne. That may still happen, if Pedersen is interested in looking ahead to whatever driving career he can salvage, rather than focusing on taking AJ Foyt to court.

Of course, we’ve heard the usual suspects like Ed Jones (seriously?), Conor Daly, Callum Ilott and many other drivers that have been discarded over the past few years and have found themselves on the outside looking in.

One name that was rarely, if ever, linked to DCR was Jack Harvey. Since he first climbed into an Indy car in 2017, Harvey has been a paid driver – first with Meyer Shank Racing (MSR), and then with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLLR). As far as I know, Harvey has never brought funding to his program since he has been in IndyCar. It is widely believed that a driver wanting to drive for Dale Coyne, needs to bring money. Full funding in better, but most Coyne drivers at least bring a good chunk of cash to the table. If Harvey has pooled any money together since his dismissal last summer at RLLR, I am not aware of it.

Before testing got underway at Homestead last week, everyone was wondering if Coyne would even be in South Florida. Not only was DCR there, but Jack Harvey was in the cockpit for the first two days of the three-day test, before Indy NXT race-winner Nolan Siegel climbed into the car on Thursday. Siegel was sixth-quick on the day and ran a lap slightly quicker than Alexander Rossi’s fastest time of the day.

The big question is…who will be in the Coyne cars, when the season starts in about six weeks at St. Petersburg?

Knowing Coyne’s history, there is a chance that neither driver that tested for him last week at Homestead will be in either one of his cars when the green flag flies on the season – but I don’t think so.

Not that I have many sources on the inside to begin with, but I’ve heard nothing about what to expect – so I’m just going with my gut here. Keep in mind, last August I was predicting that Dave Malukas would be driving for Ganassi this year and that Grosjean would remain driving for Andretti. That shows how accurate my gut is.

My gut tells me that Coyne has already struck a deal with former Foyt driver, Benjamin Pedersen to be in one of his cars fulltime. I’m not sure how much money Pedersen has at his disposal, but it sounds like it is a lot. Reportedly, he funded a lot of Santino Ferrucci’s program in the No. 14 last year. When the alliance was struck with Penske late last season, perhaps Pedersen’s cash became a little less important after his crash damage added up.

I’m thinking that Pedersen will be funding all of his car, as well as a good portion of the other car at Coyne. Coyne now has to decide between a raw talent like Siegel to pair with a second-year driver that crashed a lot as a rookie; or a not so-spectacular veteran driver like Harvey, who will be less likely to tear up cars.

Personally, I hope Jack Harvey gets the nod and here’s why. The saga of Jack Harvey over the past three seasons has been fascinating, albeit mystifying.

Harvey and MSR entered the NTT IndyCar Series together in the 2017 Indianapolis 500, when their lone appearance together that season earned them a very unimpressive thirty-first place finish. Before only his second fulltime season at MSR was complete. The following season they planned only six races. In 2019, they expanded that to ten. The team had a definite plan to grow slowly and not get ahead of themselves. It appeared to be working as results steadilyn improved.

The pandemic year of 2020 was their first fulltime season in IndyCar. They were still going through growing pains in their maiden fulltime season as they earned fifteenth in the season standings.

For 2021, the team announced a part-time second car for Helio Castroneves. The car was to make six appearances, beginning with the Indianapolis 500. When Helio’s first time to crawl into an MSR car turned into his fourth Indianapolis 500 win – Harvey was something of an afterthought at MSR. I have no idea if those dynamics led to his departure from the team that he helped grow into a fulltime team, but by August of that year, it was announced he would be moving on to the new fulltime entry at RLLR.

I’m not sure that I’ve seen a new driver at a new team get off to such a rocky start. No one ever confused Jack Harvey with Scott Dixon, but I always felt like he was a solid driver who was more than capable. But when Harvey moved to RLLR at the start of the 2022 season, it appeared like he had suddenly forgotten how to drive a race car. None of the RLLR cars were good in 2022, but the distance between Harvey and his new teammates, Graham Rahal and Christian Lundgaard, was staggering.

Things were no better in 2023 – especially on the ovals. The four Rahal cars, with the addition of Katherine Legge, in practice and qualifying for the Indianapolis 500; were notoriously slow. Things hit rock bottom when Harvey was the one who bumped Rahal from the field of the Indianapolis 500. Harvey was not expected to roll over and let Rahal in – and I don’t think it was held against him. But it was certainly unfortunate that Harvey was the one that bumped the boss’s son off of the starting grid.

Later last summer, Harvey was mercifully fired from RLLR with three races to go. He had been a dead man walking for most of the summer, and I don’t think anyone was totally shocked when RLLR pulled the plug on Harvey.

So far, no one has really gone public as to what went wrong with Jack Harvey at RLLR. I’m not sure even those on the inside really know. Was it simply a case of bad chemistry with his team? Were the Rahal cars totally unsuited for Harvey’s driving style? It was, and still is, a mystery why things were so bad for Harvey at RLLR. Perhaps we’ll never know what happened, but I think Jack Harvey is a much better driver than what he showed at RLLR, or even MSR for that matter. Things certainly deteriorated at MSR after Harvey’s departure, that’s for sure.

We always talk about certain underachieving drivers, saying things like “I’d like to see what (name driver here) could do if they had top equipment”. Dale Coyne Racing took a pretty big step backwards in 2023 as well, and they are not considered one of the teams that traditionally has top equipment. Still, they have had solid seasons and won several races, doing a lot with very little.

I think DCR and Jack Harvey probably need each other right now, and I’m hopeful that Harvey gets the nod at Coyne for 2024. They won’t contend for the championship and most likely will not even win a race. But I think the two of them together could help each other to possibly be competitive, which was not the case for Coyne or Harvey in 2023.

I think Jack Harvey deserves another chance in IndyCar. He is in his prime right now. If he and Dale Coyne Racing can make each other competitive again, it would be one of the main storylines coming out of the end of the season in September – a story of a team and a driver redeeming themselves. Those are the kind of stories I like.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on January 29, 2024 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.