At the final race of the 2025 NTT IndyCar Series season, Dale Coyne announced a partnership with Todd Ault’s company Ault Blockchain and said that he would have his driver lineup announced by Halloween.
One month later, the team announced that Dennis Hauger would pilot one of the two Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) entries for the 2026 season, and that Andretti Global would enter into a technical partnership with the Chicago-based team, supplying parts and data.
Job half done.
Halloween came and went. Thanksgiving came and went. Christmas came and went. No driver announcement.
Content days arrived in Indianapolis in early February, and on the second day, a certain driver was spotted walking around with DCR’s communications representative. However, with things being as touch-and-go as they were in Indianapolis, nobody could pinpoint the exact details that the team had for the second driver arrangement.
We all saw it was Romain Grosjean. Hell, you could see Grosjean on an Instagram story in the green room, so it wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret.
Still, it became a running joke in the offseason about when the team would finally confirm its second driver. Eventually, Valentine’s Day became the new Halloween as DCR confirmed Grosjean just before Cupid struck many couples in love.
But what were the expectations for 2026? Rinus VeeKay was the team’s star in 2025, but the Dutch racer left to go to Juncos Hollinger Racing. Meanwhile, Jacob Abel was a rookie who finished 18th or lower in every race except for the second race at Iowa Speedway, where he finished 11th thanks to good strategy.
Grosjean was a proven veteran, but he didn’t race in IndyCar in 2025, while Hauger was the defending Indy NXT champion with prior Formula 2 experience but was a blank slate in IndyCar.
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However, a few key personnel were back at DCR for 2026. Michael Cannon briefly worked at PREMA before leaving the team early in 2025. Following his brief gardening leave, he rejoined DCR after having worked for them in the 2010s. Cannon would work with Hauger, while Grosjean would work with another engineer returning to DCR after a long absence.
Bill Pappas has been around IndyCar racing since the late 1980s, when he worked for Patrick Racing. After moving around the paddock, Pappas landed at Dale Coyne in 2009 and again in 2012-2013 when he engineered Justin Wilson to two victories.
After spending a decade working for the sanctioning body, Coyne brought back his old engineer, and the gang was now back together for 2026. Returning engineer for a returning driver on one side of the team, returning(ish) engineer for a rookie driver on the other side of the team.
In a sport where the same driver, race strategist, and race engineer have won four of the last five championships and almost a quarter of the races in that time span, it’s easy to think that new combinations on a team that hasn’t won a race since 2018 will make little impact on the IndyCar field.
Then Saturday afternoon rolled around, and it was time for qualifying. Grosjean went third-fastest in the first group of Round 1 one to advance to Round 2.
Eyebrows were raised. Then again, DCR has won at St. Petersburg, and Grosjean is a former St. Petersburg polesitter.
Then, only a few minutes later, Hauger goes fourth-fastest, also advancing to Round 2.
Hang on a minute, we might have something here. The last time both Dale Coyne Racing cars advanced into the second round of qualifying on a normal road or street course weekend was in June of 2022 at the final race on Belle Isle in Detroit.
That day, both Takuma Sato and David Malukas also advanced to the final round of knockout qualifying, with Sato starting second ahead of Malukas in sixth. Could history repeat itself?
The 10-minute clock ticked down, and yes, it was happening. Hauger placed fourth in round two with Grosjean in sixth. Meanwhile, Arrow McLaren and Meyer Shank Racing had no cars in the Fast Six, while Andretti Global and Chip Ganassi Racing each only had one car in the session.
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If you had two DCR cars in the Firestone Fast Six on your bingo cards or your predictions for the weekend, then let everybody know what next week’s winning lottery numbers are.
Hauger qualified third, Grosjean sixth, and the rest of the field had to take notice.
Dale Coyne Racing was back.
After years of being overlooked with only six top-five finishes between all of their drivers over the last four seasons, there could be no more glossing over the fact that DCR put it all together when it mattered in Florida.
Races can always play out weird with strategy and cautions. After 100 laps, Grosjean finished eighth with Hauger just 2 seconds behind him in 10th for the team’s first double top-10 result since World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway in 2022, when Malukas finished second and Sato finished fifth.
The team made sweet music when they got the band back together. Just ask Dale Coyne. He’ll tell you.
Never know what will come to pass, but all signs point toward Hauger becoming a major player in Indycar. Was competitive (though not the fastest) in F2, absolutely dominated in IndyNXT last year, and now logged a top ten in his first Indycar start. It’s been fun watching his career trajectory.