In every Indianapolis 500, there’s a sleeper team. A team that doesn’t get near the credit it deserves throughout the buildup to The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.’
All through practices, qualifying and media day, the team flies under the radar. Then, when the green flag blankets over the 33-car field, that “sleeper” team rises to the occasion.
Last season, the one-off entry of Dreyer & Reinbold Racing played it clean for the 200-lap event and gave Sage Karam his best finish in the Indy 500, with a solid seventh-place effort.
Heading into Sunday’s 500-mile race, the Indy-only team brings two young and confident racers that may just steal the show.
“Having this conversation with Dennis (Reinbold) the other day, it’s like ‘hey, we’re here to win, and I don’t give a s— about second place.’” Santino Ferrucci, driver of the No. 23 Chevrolet said. “Dennis is basically like, green light, do what it takes, doesn’t care what happens.
“For me, it’s the first time I’ve heard a team owner really been like ‘go out, and ——- (expletive) do whatever you can to win this damn thing.’ Most of the times, it’s ‘take care of the equipment, take care of this, we’re in a points championship or a points fight.’”
That green light to go for it from co-owner Dennis Reinbold, comes from the fact this is the team’s sole chance every season to show out on the biggest stage.
“It’s pretty intense, especially for the team,” said Karam, driver of the No. 24 Chevrolet. “They wait all year long for this race, and I wait all year long for this race. So, there is a lot of pressure. It’s not like if we have a bad race, that we can just bounce back next week at the next race. They put their blood, sweat, and tears into this thing, all year long. When it’s here, it’s here. It’s finally here.”
The duo of Karam and Ferrucci go back to their karting days, where they began a friendship that’s found its way to Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
What the two young Americans have found out, is that they may have a unique weapon that can lift both entries closer to tasting the milk on Sunday.
“Driving style wise, (we’re) very similar in driving styles,” Karam said. “We do get along behind the scenes, in the engineering room. We can bounce ideas off each other. If you have a teammate that you just don’t get along with, and you guys just don’t talk to each other, it makes life pretty difficult behind the scenes. It just won’t go smoothly. If you guys aren’t chatting, and you aren’t running ideas past each other and trying to make the car better as an overall package for each other, it’s just never going to work. I think that’s a good thing that me and Santino have is we can communicate with each other, and we speak the same language of wanting what’s best out of the car. What we feel like is best, is the same. It’s really, really good.”
Ferrucci echoed the fact that the two struck a chord when setting up their cars.
“The qualifying car that I drove, was all done by Sage,” Ferrucci said. “I trust him with helping with the setup. He trusts me, so we have a great team experience. We feed off of each other, we do really well together. I think we’ve proven that we can drive well together. It’s good for us to work together the way we have been to really elevate our platform.”
That platform has been built over the past couple seasons with Sage Karam, who will compete in his eighth Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, including his seventh with Dreyer & Reinbold.
“It’s pretty rare that you’re with a race team for this long,” Karam said. “Especially when it’s just one-off races every year. It’s been an awesome ride, to be with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for this long. I feel like every year we get better and better. I think this has been our absolute best year from start to finish so far. I think the addition of Santino has been great, in the sense that me and him are very similar in what we want out of the race cars so we’re both just trying to push the program forward with the feeling of the car.”
With Karam’s chemistry within the organization, he’s seen what’s worked over the years, and also what hasn’t when preparing for Indy.
“I think for us, we’ve focused a lot, solely on the race car and not the qualifying car,” Karam said. “For a long time, that really worked for us. Then the last few years, we saw with how this race went, it was hard to pass. The qualifying car was a lot more important than we always anticipated.”
With the addition of Ferrucci into the fold, that freed up the possibility for the team to work on both areas equally, with the drivers sharing that trust within each other.
“Being a two-car team this year, I think it’s helped because the first day, before Fast Friday, Santino was out there doing race running and I was doing qualifying stuff,” Karam said. “While he helped developing the race car, I basically developed the qualifying. He did our qualifying run at the end of the day, (and) didn’t like the feeling of his car. Come Fast Friday and qualifying, he just threw what I was doing all day on Thursday and really liked it. I think that’s the benefit of having two cars.”
That correlation between the drivers’ similar wants in the cockpit, helped propel the two-car effort to its best qualifying results in the race (Ferrucci 15th, Karam 22nd).
Despite an improvement of nine spots from his last three Indy 500 qualifying results (31st), Karam was left wanting more.
“For me, I was so mad after my first qualifying run because I knew I had more in it,” Karam said. “When you miss it by a little bit here, it’s a lot. We missed it just by a little bit. You know you’re waiting all year long for those four laps. When you don’t nail those four laps, it’s frustrating, and that’s why I was so upset. At the end of the day, that’s why this team has been so good in the past, is that we always are striving to be the best.”
In the No. 23 camp, Ferrucci found a good balance during qualifying, raising his overall level of contentment inside the cockpit.
“I haven’t started this far up before,” Ferrucci said. “I’ve always felt like I’ve been on my back foot come start of this race. We’re actually starting in the top 15, we’re definitely right where we should be. For once, we’re actually starting somewhere to where I think our car really belongs.”
In last year’s Indianapolis 500 the duo, driving for different teams, combined to gain 41 spots over 500 miles with Ferucci finishing one spot ahead of Karam in sixth.
Even though both drivers have been known to be hard chargers in the race, Ferrucci still believes that remaining patient and sticking to a plan will produce a better result.
“My strategy as a driver, I always tend to ride,” Ferrucci said. “I like to ride the first half of the race and save fuel. I try to get off-sequence by saving fuel if I can. I’ve tried to model what I’ve done after Dixie (Scott Dixon) to be honest with you. Just go as long as I can, just save as much fuel as I can, and try and turn hopefully what is extending one lap into two, into four, into six. Just eventually trying to make it so I have clean air and can do some big overcuts. I feel like the overcuts always been super powerful here.”
As Sunday approaches, one driver’s name and likeness will forever be etched in the historic Borg-Warner trophy.
Despite seven of the last 10 Indy 500s going to the powerhouse teams of Chip Ganassi Racing, Team Penske and Andretti Autosport, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing isn’t fazed by the challenge at hand.
“Even though we’re a little team, we want to take the fight to the big guys, like Ganassi and Penske and Andretti and McLaren,” Karam said. “We showed that we could do that last year, and we showed that we had that speed all week this week. We just kind of missed it a little bit in qualifying, but I think in the race we’re going to be a force to be reckoned with.”
As the final adjustments and fine-tuning is made on the pair of Chevrolets back in the depths of Gasoline Alley, the drivers share similar opinions on what they feel will ultimately define a successful day.
“For me, I’d say if we can get this thing back in the top-five, it’d be pretty astonishing,” Ferrucci said. “First, you got to finish 200 laps to be there. If we get through that, take it one lap at a time, one pit stop at a time, I think we’ll be there at the end without any questions.”
“I know Dennis (Reinbold) and the team only show up here for one thing and that’s to win the race,” Karam said. “That’s the only reason I show up as well. I’m going into Sunday with the full expectation of leaving an Indy 500 champion. Anything short of that is mission failed.”