Coyne narrowing driver search for No.18 Honda

Dale Coyne is narrowing his list of candidates to replace Rinus VeeKay in the No. 18 Honda.

With VeeKay’s decision to vacate the seat and pursue a bigger opportunity in the IndyCar Series, Coyne says the process of identifying his next lead driver is already underway.

“We've been looking,” Coyne told RACER. “And I will say this year that the list is much shorter, but the quality is much higher.”

RACER understands former Coyne driver Romain Grosjean – a favorite of the No. 18’s primary sponsor as well – is in the mix, and 2024 IndyCar Rookie of the Year Linus Lundqvist is also said to be among the names on the shortlist.

VeeKay’s teammate, 2024 Indy NXT runner-up Jacob Abel, is not expected to return for his sophomore IndyCar season with Coyne, which leaves the Illinois-based operation with two entries in need of drivers.

Along with whomever is hired for the No. 18 car, new NXT champion Dennis Hauger, who romped to the title with Andretti Global, is widely tipped to be joining Coyne for his rookie campaign in 2026 in the No. 51 Honda with underwriting from Andretti . The TWG Motorsport-owned Andretti organization has no known IndyCar vacancies for Hauger to fill in 2026. With Will Power expected to be confirmed as Colton Herta’s replacement, and Kyle Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson entering the final season of their three-year contracts, Hauger’s return to Andretti – provided a deal with Coyne is struck – as an IndyCar driver would not be anticipated to happen prior to 2027.

With options to explore and at least one decision to make on drivers, Coyne says the team will focus on improving its speedway oval package and fans just might get to see the new signing in action when testing resumes during the off-season.

“We’ve got a full-on press starting tomorrow morning to get our Speedway car turned around,” Coyne said. “Hopefully we're testing the latter part of October and will see if we can improve ourselves from where we've been at because if we're lacking anywhere, it's obviously superspeedways. Indy was terrible, and Nashville wasn't very good. So it's superspeedway stuff we got to work on really hard and quick.”