Dale Coyne is hoping Esteban Gutierrez can remain with his Dale Coyne Racing outfit for as Sebastien Bourdais takes to recuperate from his injuries suffered during qualifying for the Indianapolis 500.
Gutierrez is making his Verizon IndyCar Series debut this weekend around the streets of Belle Isle in Detroit, and although the likes of Oriol Servia and James Davison are in contention for the ride, Coyne hopes that the former Sauber F1 Team and Haas F1 Team racer is able to stay with the team this season.
Coyne has revealed that the deal to run Gutierrez does not just cover this weekend at ‘Motor City’, and that the Mexican is set to make his oval track debut with the team this season.
“It’s not just a one-event deal,” said Coyne on Motorsport.com. “He’ll do more – ovals as well. He wants to be here, he wants to be in IndyCar.
“We didn’t have a lot of time to get the deal done. Adrian [Fernandez, former Indy car race winner] contacted me about a driver before Indy, and I didn’t know who the driver was at that stage.
“So I contacted him to see who it was and when he told me, I thought, ‘OK, he’s got a good résumé, so it fell into place pretty quickly.”
