Paul Jeffrey
Premium
Formula One refugee Esteban Gutierrez has signed for Dale Coyne Racing to contest the upcoming Detroit Grand Prix IndyCar event, standing in for the injured Sebastian Bourdais.
With Bourdais out for the season after his terrifying shunt during the build up to the recent Indy 500, and with his Dale Coyne Racing outfit looking increasingly competitive this season in the Frenchman and rookie teammate Ed Jones hands, Gutierrez finds himself with an excellent opportunity to re-establish a reputation tarnished somewhat in his last season driving a Formula One car for Haas F1.
"I’m very grateful to join Dale Coyne Racing, a highly competitive team,” Gutierrez said. “When Dale Coyne called me, I had no doubt that this would be a great opportunity for me to get experience in the Verizon IndyCar Series. My target is to learn as quickly as possible. INDYCAR is a very challenging series for drivers, but I feel ready to take this chance.”
"I’m excited about my debut races at the Detroit Grand Prix and I cannot wait to start working with the team, engineers and Honda, as well as driving a Dallara car again,” added the former Haas F1 driver. “I have very good memories of my successful GP3 and GP2 series seasons with the Dallara cars and I worked very well with them at Haas F1 team. I will do my best for Dale Coyne Racing, Honda and all the Mexican fans.”
Understandably Coyne and his team were keen to secure an experienced driver of high level open wheel pedigree following the teams impressive start to the new season, and with Gutierrez having considerable experience of racing road and street circuits from his time in both Formula One, GP2 and Formula E, both team and driver are hopeful of hitting the ground running at Detroit on what is a tricky and tight round the houses street circuit.
“We’re going to miss having Sebastien in the No. 18 car, but we’re very happy with our choice of a replacement for him this weekend,” said team owner Dale Coyne. “Esteban has a great open-wheel racing background, especially with his time in Formula One and the GP2 series. I think he’ll do well in an Indy car despite the learning curve and we all look forward to seeing what he’ll do this weekend in Detroit.”
With a short lived stint in Formula One now seemingly over for the popular Mexican driver, at just 25 years old Gutierrez remains keen to maintain a presence in open wheel motorsports and the IndyCar drive this weekend comes as a golden opportunity to reignite a career stalled in recent seasons. Gutierrez will no doubt be keen to perform in front of the American audience, however the challenge of stepping into a brand new car on such a difficult and competitive race weekend should not be underestimated by the driver. Whatever happens this weekend it will be interesting to see just how well he can adapt at this short of a notice.
Detroit Grand Prix LIVESTREAM - Friday Practice - June 2nd 3.20pm
Check out the Motorsports Sub Forum here at RaceDepartment for more news and discussions regarding IndyCar, WEC, Touring Cars and many other different forms of real life racing.
Do you think Gutierrez has what it takes to secure a strong result in Detroit? Does the Mexican have a realistic shot of securing the Coyne drive for the remainder of the season? Let us know in the comments section below!
Last edited:
