Is this the year Dale Coyne Racing wins the Indy 500?

When Sebastien Bourdais suffered his awful-looking 228mph accident during qualifying for the 2017 Indy 500, he not only broke his pelvis and left hip, he also blew apart his and Dale Coyne Racing’s best chance of Indy 500 glory. Seb was on the third lap of his qualy run, and his first two were the fastest we’d seen that day. There’s little doubt he could have carried that pace through to the Fast Nine and at least landed a spot on the front row.

We know, too, that Dale Coyne’s team had a good race set-up that year. Rookie team-mate Ed Jones finished third the following Sunday, barely half a second behind the winner, despite damage to the nose of the car both costing him downforce and adding drag. Coyne could only shrug and wonder what might have been.

In fact, his team has produced strong speedway cars ever since the arrival of the Dallara DW12; in both 2012 and 2013, the late Justin Wilson had his DCR in fifth for the race’s final restart, while a recovered Bourdais qualified fifth and seventh in 2018 and 2019 respectively. Rookie Alex Palou would have been on the front row in 2020, but for a broken weightjacker from lap 2 in the Fast Nine shootout.

Wilson, Bourdais, Palou – all road course experts who proved adept at adapting to ovals, and who had the requisite talent to win the world’s biggest race. But they hadn’t actually done so, and that’s what makes this year very different for Dale Coyne Racing. In Takuma Sato, it has a proven two-time Indy 500 winner.

And already that oval pace is apparent. Sato qualified third in Texas last month, while in last week’s two-day test at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he was second fastest, quickest of the Honda drivers. Sure, that was with a tow, but so was everyone else’s fastest