2025 IndyCar season outlook: Dale Coyne Racing
02/19/2025 10:44 AM
With the first practice session of the new IndyCar Season due to begin at St. Petersburg on Friday, February 28, it's time to start ramping up for the launch with a look inside each of the 11 teams.
What's new, what's different, and what has stayed the same? We'll find out from each team, continuing with Dale Coyne Racing.
2024 ACHIEVEMENTS
In light of the vast difference between Coyne's 2025 lineup and the most recent season when four drivers rotated through the No. 18 Honda and six hopped in and out of the No. 51 Honda — all done out of necessity to keep both cars on track at every race and in compliance with the Leaders Circle requirements — there's no reason to document Coyne's 2024 as two new, full-time drivers have been signed.
The only carryover topic of important relates to the seven-figure Leaders Circle payouts award to the top 22 entries in the Entrants' standings.
• Entrants' Championship: No. 18, 25th (did not earn a Leaders Circle contract), No. 51, 24th (did not earn a Leaders Circle contract).
2025 DRIVERS
• No. 18 Honda: Rinus VeeKay (13th place in 2024. Zero wins/poles/top threes, one top five, seven top 10s, one race led for eight laps, running at the finish of 16 out of 17 races. Average starting position of 15.3, average finish of 13.7).
• No. 51 Honda: Jacob Abel (rookie).
2025 KEY POSITIONS
• Team Owner: Dale Coyne
• Team Manager/Technical Director: Mitch Davis
• Special Projects: Terry Brown
• No. 18 Race Engineer: Ed Nathman
• No. 18 Race Strategist: Dale Coyne
• No. 18 Chief Mechanic: Renato LaPorte
• No. 51 Race Engineer: John Dick
• No. 51 Race Strategist: Mitch Davis
• No. 51 Chief Mechanic: Shawn Britts
MAJOR CHANGES
• Dale Coyne Racing is our third consecutive team, following Arrow McLaren and Chip Ganassi Racing, to look radically different than the one that last raced at Nashville in September.
• Jack Harvey, the driver who contested the most races for Coyne in 2024, signed with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for the Indy 500 and took sponsor INVST with him to DRR.
• The array of other drivers — from Colin Braun to Tristan Vautier to Luca Ghiotto to Conor Daly to Nolan Siegel to Hunter McElrea to Toby Sowery to Katherine Legge — are racing elsewhere in the sport, barring Daly, who signed a full-season deal with Juncos Hollinger Racing. Legge could be a returnee with Coyne for the Indy 500, but DCR isn't her only option.
• Signed Jacob Abel, winner of multiple Indy NXT poles and races who placed second in the 2024 championship.
• Signed Rinus VeeKay, who was unexpectedly dropped by Ed Carpenter Racing, to complete its return to fielding two full-time drivers.
• The team had Coyne veteran Don Brisker as one of its race engineers last season and brought Steve Newey back to the series to engineer the other car right before St. Petersburg. Like the signing of VeeKay and Abel, there's also 100-percent change among race engineers, and like Newey, both have been brought back to IndyCar by Coyne.
• Abel has veteran of veterans John Dick as his race engineer, and his resume dates back to the CART IndyCar Series in the 1980s. His most recent IndyCar stops include Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, KV Racing, Dale Coyne Racing, and Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing, where he was the head of R&D from 2014-2015. Abel and Dick got their first chance to work together a few weeks ago in testing at The Thermal Club.
• Nathman was signed days ago and matches Dick with an impressively long resume filled with IndyCar team management, engineering, and NASCAR engineering experience. It's believed Nathman's most recent IndyCar work came at Jay Penske's Dragon Racing outfit with Sebastian Saavedra in 2013.
THE MISSION AHEAD IS TO…
Get back to a normal state of competition.
Two new drivers, one being a rookie in Abel and the other being a new team leader in VeeKay at the ripe age of 24. Abel has two whole days of running with the team before the first race and VeeKay, who met his engineer at the Sebring test, will have one complete day in the car before St. Petersburg. It is a tough way to open any new season.
Coyne and Mitch Davis will do their best — as they always do — to minimize the stark deficits in all areas, but there's no reason to place any expectations on the team. There's too much learning for Dick and Nathman to do with the hybrid cars while getting to know their drivers in competition before predictions can be offered.
With all of that said, one of the many reasons to love Dale Coyne Racing is the bullish attitude Coyne brings into every championship run. Doubt Coyne at your own peril.
VeeKay's Main Task: Be yourself and buckle in for the adventure. The team will need all of his energy and enthusiasm to keep its spirits high, and if he's given a decent car, VeeKay will go forward.
Abel's Main Task: Be yourself and buckle in for the adventure…too. He’s jumping in at the deep end, but if he listens to VeeKay — who coached him at the Thermal test, and the two worked well together — there's a reason to believe he will be a solid addition to the series. Very much a case of getting through the year to put knowledge in the bank and return to give a stronger indication of his true skills.
GOALS
Leaders Circle, Leaders Circle, and more Leaders Circle. Losing both contracts at the end of last season cost Coyne $2,400,000 in guaranteed prize money from Penske Entertainment, which is a brutal hit for IndyCar's smallest team to absorb.
THOUGHTS FROM TEAM OWNER DALE COYNE:
"Obviously, get both cars back in the Leader Circle is my first thought," Coyne told RACER. "Try to win Rookie of the Year with Jacob, and just get back up in the competitive, sharper end of the field. I think with Rinus, we can get some podiums and maybe even better than that. We’re excited about everything."
