IndyCar: New potential Dale Coyne Racing driver emerging for 2024

Just one of IndyCar's 10 teams still must fill a seat for the upcoming 2024 season, and that team, Dale Coyne Racing, have to fill two vacancies after losing David Malukas to Arrow McLaren after two years and Sting Ray Robb to A.J. Foyt Enterprises after one.

Former Indy NXT driver Danial Frost had been heavily linked to one of the two seats, but he is instead set to do his required two years of military service for his home country of Singapore, leaving him off the IndyCar grid until at least 2026.

One driver whose name has been consistently mentioned as a possibility for Dale Coyne Racing is Jack Harvey. Harvey was highly coveted by teams after the 2021 season, his fifth overall and second full season with Meyer Shank Racing, and he was signed by what was believed to be a top-tier Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team.

Though Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing did struggle during the 2022 and 2023 seasons compared to 2020 and 2021, Harvey was consistently the slowest of the team's three drivers (Harvey, Christian Lundgaard, Graham Rahal), as things simply never clicked between himself and the team.

He was dropped with three races remaining on the 2023 schedule after having recorded a top finish of 10th place in 30 starts. His best finish in 2023 was only 13th; the "highlight", if you can even call it that, may very well have been simply qualifying for the Indy 500 with a last-gasp effort over teammate Rahal.

Jack Harvey eyeing IndyCar resurgence in 2024

Harvey has long been assessing his options regarding a potential 2024 return, indicating that his goal is to try to rejuvenate his career following a rough go of it at Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

He tested for Dale Coyne Racing at Homestead-Miami Speedway earlier this week, and given the fact that the team would ideally like a veteran driver to fill at least one of their two seats, it's hard to argue against this pairing at this stage in the offseason.

Dale Coyne Racing may not be a top-tier IndyCar team, but Dale Coyne's track record of giving drivers another chance in the series which they would not have otherwise gotten is almost as good as his track record of signing budding stars such as Malukas, Santino Ferrucci, and two-time champion Alex Palou.

Drivers such as Sebastien Bourdais and Justin Wilson both found success late in their careers with Dale Coyne Racing, and their success in turn helped to elevate Coyne's team.

Now Dale Coyne Racing find themselves without a win since 2018, and while Harvey has yet to have his true breakthrough moment in IndyCar, he is arguably their best bet if they want to add to their Cinderella story -- and they might be his only bet to get his career back on track.

Aside from nearly pulling off an Indy 500 upset on fuel mileage in 2018, Harvey proved himself in 2019 with a Meyer Shank Racing team that were still only competing part-time, recording top 10 finishes in four of his 10 starts, including a spectacular podium finish at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course.

When the team competed full-time in 2020 and 2021, he was their full-time driver and added 12 more top 10 finishes, including finishes of fourth place on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida and at Portland International Raceway. In an ultra-competitive field, his points position improved from 15th to 13th over that two-year span.

His run of four top 10 finishes in the 2021 season's final five races boosted his stock heading into 2022, but as discussed above, things simply did not work out in his less-than-two-year run with Bobby Rahal's team.

Whether or not he does sign with Dale Coyne Racing for the 2024 IndyCar season remains to be seen, but it's hard to argue that the pros wouldn't outweigh the cons. The season is scheduled to begin on Sunday, March 10 at a St. Petersburg track which is the site of one of Harvey's top finishes. Will he be behind the wheel of the No. 18 Honda/No. 51 Honda this year?