Can You Go Home Again?
There are still five open seats remaining in the NTT IndyCar Series for 2025; Two at Dale Coyne Racing (DCR), two at Juncos Hollinger Racing (JHR) and one at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL). There is still a good chance that Romain Grosjean will end up returning to the No. 77 at JHR – possibly with Conor Daly as a teammate. But the other four seats are fairly wide-open.
Most people seem to think that Pietro Fittipaldi will not return to RLL. Other than his last name, I’m not sure how much he brought to the table. He was very forgettable in most races this past season. Unless the budget he brings is helping to pay for other cars on the team, I don’t think losing Fittipaldi will be a huge loss to RLL.
I saw something on Twitter this past Friday that got my wheels turning. Keep in mind, this is just me playing the what-if game. I am not reporting or even speculating this might happen. In fact, I’m guessing it probably won’t happen – but you never say never.It is just something to ponder over as we head into the cold months of the offseason.
What I saw was tweet from Jack Harvey, and a photo of him swapping helmets with “one of my best buds”. The best bud he was referring to was none other than Graham Rahal, who was essentially the boss that fired him a year and a half ago. OK, Bobby Rahal took the heat over firing Harvey, but you know Graham had a say in the matter.
When I first saw the tweet, I immediately wondered if this was a prelude to Harvey returning to RLL. Stranger things have happened, or have they? In the past forty years or so, there aren’t too many instances of drivers returning to a team they parted ways with.
The first one I thought about was Paul Tracy. He seemed to wear out his welcome at Marlboro Team Penske, between his rebellious attitude and his propensity to tear up equipment. In 1995, Tracy drove the season for Newman/Haas with Michael Andretti as his teammate. Many thought he had been fired from Penske, but he was actually (sort of) loaned out to the team. It was a complicated series of contingencies and what-ifs that was based around the possibility of Emerson Fittipaldi leaving the team in 1996, which is exactly what happened. Well, sort of. Fittipaldi drove for the satellite Hogan-Penske Racing in 1996, a joint venture of Roger Penske and Carl Hogan.
Needless to say, it was a very circuitous route that sent Tracy back to Penske after a one-year absence. By this time, the Penske chassis was quickly becoming a sled. Each year’s version was worse than the one before. Al Unser, Jr. was the lead driver for the team, but he was dealing with personal issues that affected his driving. All in all, it was not a good time to be at Team Penske. Tracy did win three races in the two seasons after he returned to Team Penske, but he was ultimately dropped from the team after the 1997 season.
A happier version of a driver returning to a team after being let go, also involves Team Penske and an Unser – Al Unser. After winning two championships for Penske in three years (1983 and 1985), Unser’s schedule was cut back considerably in 1986. Before the 1987 season, Big Al was dropped from the team altogether. After Danny Ongais crashed in practice at Indianapolis, Penske needed a replacement and called Al Unser. Although he was still smarting from being put out to pasture, he accepted the offer to drive a year-old car that had been sitting in the lobby of the Reading, PA Sheraton just a few weeks before.
We all know what happened next. Unser took that car that qualified on the second weekend and carefully moved it up to the front of the field, after being lapped earlier by Mario Andretti. He drove that year-old March chassis to his fourth Indianapolis 500 victory and into one of the legendary stories from The Speedway. Unser parlayed that win into two more partial seasons with Penske, before finally retiring in 1994.
Al Unser, Jr. is another driver who went back home, but he never found the success from earlier. Little Al drove for Rick Galles in two stints before winning the Indianapolis 500 for the first time in 1992. He drove for the Albuquerque businessman in 1983 and 1984, before moving on to drive for Doug Shierson for three years. In 1988, he returned to Galles with Valvoline sponsorship. He almost won the 1989 Indianapolis 500, then won the 1990 CART championship. In 1992, he won the 500 in a Galmer chassis – a joint effort between Galles and Alan Mertens.
After the 1993 season, Unser, Jr. moved to Team Penske. There he won the pole for the 1994 Indianapolis 500, the race, and the championship that season. Life was good, but it would be short-lived as the team failed to make the Indianapolis 500 in 1995. The Split of 1996 prevented Unser from participating in the Indianapolis 500 again until 2000. when he was driving for…Rick Galles.
The third time provided a mixed bag for Unser and Galles. They won two races in the two seasons they were together, but there were a lot of bad finishes in between them. He moved on to Kelley Racing for 2002, but his personal demons resurfaced and interfered with his racing. His best finish was sixth in points in the two years there. He held on for a few more forgettable Indianapolis 500 appearances, but he proved how tough it is to go back home – even in the third try.
When I first saw the tweet from Harvey and the thought of him returning to RLL briefly went through my head – that’s when I started thinking about how hard that is to do. Takuma Sato had some success with Rahal over ten years ago. He came within a failed pass on the last lap of winning the 2012 Indianapolis 500. He returned to the team in 2018, after stints at Foyt and Andretti, where he won Long Beach for Foyt and the 2017 Indianapolis 500 for Andretti.
In 2018, Sato returned to RLL. He won four races, including the 2020 Indianapolis 500. He moved on after the 2021 season and drve for Dale Coyne in 2022. He drove in five oval races for Ganassi in 2023, before returning to RLL for the 2024 Indianapolis 500. Although he only finished in fourteenth, he was the second-highest finisher among the four RLL cars. Was that a success? Maybe. Maybe not.
My point is that the few repeat stints with a team generally don’t go all that well – at least the few I can think of. Can you think of any more than the ones I have mentioned? It sounds good in theory, getting the gang back together for another run at glory – but it’s usually hard to find the magic that came so easy previously.
So despite my initial thought that we may be looking at a Harvey-Rahal reunion next season, I think we can take the Harvey tweet at face-value. It is nothing more than what we see – a helmet swap between two old friends.
George Phillips
November 11, 2024 at 7:50 am
I feel like there have been some guys who have logged second runs with Dale Coyne……Justin Wilson, Bourdais, Ed Jones? And of course, sadly, we would have seen a second run of Dan Wheldon at Andretti in 2012 if not for the Las Vegas tragedy.
November 11, 2024 at 10:03 am
I like Pietro Fittipaldi, but it was certainly a season to forget for him. I’m not sure where he got the most time on camera; perhaps in Portland, where he was inexplicably penalized for getting hit by Scott Dixon… or perhaps it was in Nashville, where a banner promoting the Big Machine Grand Prix with Pietro’s face and name on it loomed above as Jon Bon Jovi helped talk a woman out of jumping off the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge.
I would be surprised if we see either Harvey or Pietro in an RLL car next year, the most likely return to former team story at this point seems to be Sting Ray Robb to Coyne.
Perhaps the first successful return to a team that comes to my mind is Michael Andretti with Newman-Haas. Mauri Rose is another that might count. Rose won a race at Syracuse and too the 1936 AAA National Championship driving 3 of the 4 championship races for Lou Moore (at the 500, Moore himself drove the car that Rose later ran), who he would return to in 1940 and have a very successful run at IMS in the following few years.
November 11, 2024 at 10:16 am
Near the time for Graham to join Dad on the box calling races. Need fresh young talent for the series.