When the cars zoom so fast that they are just colorful blurs circling the oval at this year’s Indianapolis 500, former race car driver Dale Coyne will be watching from the sidelines. And he doesn’t mind.
That’s because Coyne, a Plainfield resident, is more than just your average spectator. He owns several of the cars vying to take their places among 33 machines that will answer the call to “start your engines.”
And despite accidents the middle of last week that destroyed two of his cars, if Coyne, 37, has his way, this will be the year he careens out from relative obscurity to join big names on the racing circuit such as Mario Andretti and A.J. Foyt. Coyne is a husky, personable man, whom sportswriters have compared in physical appearance to golfer John Daly.
Coyne, who grew up fifth in a family of six children on a farm in Minooka, appears to be a hardworking, conscientious Midwesterner who gave up a landscaping business to follow his dream.
When Coyne was younger, not even illness-mononucleosis, to be specific-was enough to stop him from watching cars spin around the track at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.
“Even though I had mono, I rented a motor home with a bunch of guys one week to go see the races,” admitted Coyne, who graduated from Joliet Junior College. After school he started the landscaping business in Plainfield and also began doing what previously he had just watched-racing. He devoted all of his spare time to racing Formula Atlantic and Super Vee cars, which are smaller and less powerful than Indy cars. “I used the money I made (in landscaping) to go to the races,” Coyne explained.
Gradually, Coyne realized that he was spending most of his energy, time and money on racing. In 1984, he graduated to the Indy car circuit and sold his landscaping business to form a new company-Dale Coyne Racing. The notion of such a move is daunting to say the least.
The cost of running an Indy car team for one season can run up to $8 million. But when Coyne started, all he could afford was a stock Chevy engine. It was no comparison to the fierce racing engines that other teams were running and Coyne realized he needed more horsepower. Becoming a middleman was one way to finance a better machine.
“Some other drivers had sponsors, and we knew we needed better equipment,” Coyne said in a Chicago Tribune interview last year. “We became a contract service for drivers. There’d be a driver who had a sponsor or we’d find a sponsor who wanted a certain driver. They needed a home to bring a contract to.”
Although Coyne felt it was the equipment, not his racing skills, that held him back, he also decided to start leaving the driving to others.
“Driving is a lot of fun,” admitted Coyne, whose best finish in his racing days was an 11th place in the Budweiser Grand Prix in Cleveland. “But the fact is that since I was a driver I can understand what (drivers) are going through.”
He compares his role to that of a coach.
“I call the race. I have to be in communication with the driver,” he explained. One of Coyne’s drivers is Eric Bachelart, a native of Belgium who vouches for Coyne’s coaching skills.
“Dale is a previous race car driver so he can teach me,” he said. “He taught me how to drive on the oval (which is not done in Europe).”
Besides that, Bachelart said: “Dale is a good engineer. The car has to be safe. It’s important for the driver to trust the team that is behind him.
“And,” he added, “Dale is personable. I feel good (working with him). That makes me go fast.”
As a former driver, Coyne is aware of the risks race drivers take.
“There’s an element of danger,” he said. “But drivers run in the cars all year long. The cars are tested and engineered constantly.”
The engineering know-how of Coyne’s team has been recognized by the racing world. In 1990, Coyne received the Clint Brawner Mechanical Excellence Award, which is bestowed each year at the Indianapolis 500. Named for a famous chief mechanic, it recognizes mechanical expertise.
In 1992, Coyne’s chief mechanic, Bernie Myers, who hails from Downers Grove, won the same award. Their names are engraved on a trophy housed in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
“We had a really good year with the equipment we had, which was older,” said Myers, who has worked with Coyne for 11 seasons. Last year, the Coyne team, which can include as many as 30 people, fielded two cars that qualified and ran in the 500 race, where they finished 16th and 32nd. Their best finish to date has been a sixth at the Toyota Grand Prix in Long Beach, Calif. For his part, Myers said he likes Coyne’s “honesty. There’s a lot of people in this business who are not trustworthy.”
And lest anyone forget, racing is indeed a business. Trying to attract sponsors and keeping old ones happy is a continual activity for Coyne. Sponsorship is, after all, what keeps their machines oiled.
A team like Coyne’s doesn’t have the name or backing of a Mario Andretti. Trying to get sponsorship for an unknown team “is tough,” Coyne observed. “You have to keep working at it. Because we’re young and hungry, we’ll do anything we can to get the exposure.”
Coyne also is one of only five team owners to sit on the board of the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) board, which governs Indy car racing.
This year, Coyne put a car on the track that bears the name of the car that won the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911. Shaped like the sleek body of the insect, the lemon-yellow car is called the Marmon Wasp II. When the first Wasp competed, the average speed of the race was 75 miles per hour. Today speeds climb upward of 230 miles per hour.
For this car, Coyne is being sponsored by the Marmon Group of Companies, a Chicago-based conglomerate headed by Robert Pritzker. The company has a subsidiary that owned the first car ever to win the 500.
Coyne’s other cars are being sponsored by such companies as Mi-Jack, CompUSA, Agfa and Copper and Brass Sales of Detroit.
As a result of the mid-week crashes in practice, Coyne was left scrambling to see how many cars he could put together for Bachelart and his other drivers, Robbie Buhl and Ross Bentley.
Before the Marmon Group decided to back Coyne, Pritzker said four teams were interviewed.
“Our impression is that he is up and coming, as is his driver (Bachelart) ” Pritzker said. “We wanted to get someone who is on his way up, not the other way around.”
The sponsorship was announced at an elegant luncheon in Chicago in March. Bachelart signed autographs and Coyne posed with company execs for photos beside the racing car. But the glamor of such events doesn’t reflect the day-to-day life of a racing team. From March through October, Coyne and his staff call hotel rooms in such distant points as Australia or Toronto their home. His wife, Gail, handles administration, coordination and logistics for the team.
“He’s an absolute fascination to watch,” Gail said of her husband. “Just running three teams at once is a tremendous feat in itself.”
Their equipment is hauled in a 18-wheel, semi-tractor-trailer, and they travel the world on the Indy car circuit.
“Inside of it we can do anything we have to do on the car. If we have to make a part, we can,” Myers explained. “If we can’t fix it on the trailer, then that’s really bad. It’s time to go home.”
Maintenance of the automobiles is a constant task.
“Each individual piece (of the cars) is made of space-age materials. They have to be constantly looked after,” Myers said.
In the off-season, the team tinkers with its cars in Plainfield, tests them and goes after sponsors. Coyne said he likes proving to businesses “that this is worthwhile. A lot of people don’t know how this works. We try to document how we increase sales.”
Dave Elshoff, director of publicity for the Championship Auto Racing Teams, said, “Dale has always found himself challenged to find resources to run in this league. But he’s been able to put together a program that continues to grow and develop. It’s good for the Indy car series. It shows that money and sponsors are out there.”
Coyne makes appearances at auto shows and other events and tracks how much television and press exposure a business has received from its sponsorship. A racing career leaves little time for hobbies, however.
“I like to play golf, but I don’t do that much anymore,” he said.
Racing is not always serious work, however. Last year, the Coyne team had some fun when racing in Portland, where the hometown team had just lost the NBA championship to the Chicago Bulls.
“We weren’t trying to throw salt in anyone’s wounds,” Coyne recalled with a grin. “But we did race a car with a `Da Bulls’ logo on its side.”
Having the chance to live his dream keeps Coyne revved and ready to go.
“It’s unique when you can make a living at something that other people wish they could do,” he said.
Coyne’s mother, Shirley, who still lives in Minooka, could not have predicted her son’s racing career.
“I don’t know whatever induced him (to take up racing). There’s nothing in his background like that,” she said with a laugh. “But he did like cars and he had a motorbike when he was young.”
As far as Shirley is concerned, her son is a winner on and off the race track.
Coyne is not predicting he’ll win the Indy 500 this year, but don’t count him out altogether.
“It’s a long race,” he said. “Anything can happen.”
