Andretti Global has entered into a new technical alliance with Dale Coyne Racing and it’s unlike Andretti’s previous arrangements with Harding Steinbrenner Racing for Colton Herta in 2019 and Meyer Shank Racing from 2020-24.
With Harding and MSR, it supplied Andretti-built dampers, chassis setup information, and deployed Andretti race engineers to run the cars. In the new relationship with Coyne, the TWG Motorsports-owned Andretti organization will limit its services to componentry and information for DCR’s entries.
Armed with race engineer and technical leader Michael Cannon – who rejoined Coyne after the Indianapolis 500 in May – DCR will rely on Cannon and the rest of its in-house engineering staff to run Andretti-affiliated Dennis Hauger, the reigning Indy NXT champion, and whomever Coyne signs as his teammate.
Although the link between Andretti and Coyne is new, there’s a pre-existing shorthand among the key players that should accelerate their progress. Cannon has familiarity with Andretti from his time working for the team as a race engineer in the early 2010s, and during his previous tour with Coyne, Cannon also worked with Craig Hampson, who shifted to the Andretti team a few years ago and will liaise with Cannon and Coyne in the new technical arrangement.
“We lacked last year in our superspeedway setups, both at Indy and Nashville, and that’s our big push right now to make that better,” Coyne told RACER. “Mike has worked with Craig and they have a good history together. Andretti’s gonna help us with the car and scan the car. That’s the first process that you do to determine where we’re at with the cars to then get them aligned with theirs. Then it’s just ongoing developmental work on the gearbox and the uprights, all the things you do for a speedway car. We were strong three or four years ago on speedways, so we gotta figure that one out.”
Coyne admits his team has struggled on superspeedways lately and hopes the Andretti alliance will help to address that. James Black/IMS
DCR impressed last season with Rinus VeeKay in the No. 18 Honda as they outperformed a number of big teams on the way to placing 14th in the championship. With a promising talent like Hauger, plus Cannon and the caliber of support that propelled Andretti to place fourth in the standings with Kyle Kirkwood and seventh with Colton Herta, Coyne sees the potential for a strong two-way relationship.
“We will use our people to do the engineering and meet with them (Andretti) probably once a week,” he said. “Then once we get into the season, we’ll do a pre-brief for the races and a post-debrief after, and meetings before each race to discuss our philosophy, their philosophy, what’s going on, how we’re setting the cars up – they’ll be helping us. I’m really excited about the two organizations coming together like this. There’s so many things that they do well, and then maybe they learn some stuff from us too, because I think we’re a good team and we build solid cars.”
Coyne says he’ll wait until the second car is sorted before deciding which driver will get the No. 18 and the No. 51 Hondas and which race engineers will be attached to each entry.
“Haven’t decided exactly which car the engineers will be on, or the car numbers,” he confirmed. “Once we get the second car done, we can do that.”
Assuming the year goes well for Hauger, who is expected to return to Andretti in a race seat at some point in the near future, Coyne hopes to see the Andretti relationship continue so more of its Indy NXT champions and stars on the development ladder can get their IndyCar start with DCR.
“We talked about that, and they’ve got more drivers coming through the pipeline that they have pretty high hopes for,” Coyne said. “We’ll see how we go along together this year before getting more seriously into all that. Kind of a ‘walk before you run’ thing. But I think it very well could be a long term-program if everybody’s happy.”
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