Dale Coyne Racing expect to decide which drivers will drive the #19 Honda for the team in the 2018 IndyCar within the next few weeks.
With Dale Coyne Racing aiming to announce which drivers will share time behind the wheel of the #19 Honda in the 2018 IndyCar season prior to the test at ISM Raceway in Avondale, Arizona on Friday, February 9th and Saturday, February 10th, let’s have a look at the most likely scenario in terms of their 2017 driver lineup.
We already know that four-time champion Sebastien Bourdais, 38, is set to pilot the #18 Honda for the team for the second straight season.
Hopefully Bourdais will not get into any nasty wrecks this season like he did last season, as his wreck in qualifications for the Indianapolis 500 sidelined him for nine of the season’s 17 races and took him out of championship contention.
Here is a video of that wreck.
However, what we don’t know is which drivers will be his teammates in the #19 Honda throughout the year. We do know, however, that the #19 Honda will be driven by at least two drivers throughout the season. This was confirmed by Dale Coyne Racing team owner Dale Coyne himself, as no single driver could come up with the funds to drive full-time.
The question becomes how many drivers and which drivers will end up sharing time behind the wheel of the #19 Honda in the 2018 IndyCar season.
In all likelihood, there will be two drivers who share time behind the wheel of the #19 in the 2018 season, and those two drivers will be 19-year-old Zachary Claman DeMelo and 21-year-old Pietro Fittipaldi.
Claman DeMelo and Fittipaldi both test drove for Dale Coyne Racing this past week at Sebring International Raceway. Claman DeMelo’s test was planned, but Fittipaldi’s came as a surprise to him. However, the tests of both drivers impressed Dale Coyne.
Claman DeMelo is coming off of two seasons in the Indy Lights Series. He won his first race in the 2017 season at Road American driving for Carlin Motorsport en route to a career-high 5th place finish in the championship standings The next step up for him would be IndyCar.
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Fittipaldi, on the other hand, came to Sebring to test an Indy Lights car and ended up testing both an Indy Lights car and an IndyCar. He has driven in several racing series since beginning his professional career in 2011. Most recently, he won the 2017 World Series Formula V8 3.5 championship.
Given the fact that Claman DeMelo has experience racing on oval tracks in Indy Lights, it would make sense for him to drive on the oval tracks and Fittipaldi to drive on the road and street courses in the 2018 season.
However, these drivers have not yet been officially confirmed, and Coyne said that determining which drivers drive in which races would come down to other factors such as sponsorship, according to Motorsport.com.
"“But there’s a couple of other factors to decide which driver we put in for which events – sponsors that will want certain races, that kind of thing. But you know, it’s still a work in progress.”"
Conor Daly, 26, was also in the mix to drive for Dale Coyne Racing in the 2018 season, but unfortunately a potential sponsorship deal fell through, so his odds of landing a ride with the team are now slim. Jack Hawksworth, 26, has also been in the picture as a favorite of Honda, but he has not tested for any team in the series and there have been no new developments about him possibly planning to do so in the near future.
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Which drivers will end up driving for Dale Coyne Racing in the #19 Honda in the 2018 IndyCar season? How many drivers will share time behind the wheel of the car? Will Zachary Claman DeMelo and Pietro Fittipaldi be two of them? Expect to find out the answers to these questions before the test at ISM Raceway on February 9th and 10th.