Davison Heads Straight To Rush Hour after Answering Late Call from Coyne
May 23, 2017 | By Phillip B. Wilson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
James Davison was about 350 miles away, taking part in the SVRA Spring Vintage Festival Weekend at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, while also watching a live online stream of qualifying Saturday for the 101st Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil.
Then he saw Sebastien Bourdais and the No. 18 GEICO Dale Coyne Racing Honda slam into the Turn 2 wall.
“I was pretty horrified, to be honest,” Davison said Monday after his first practice session in a Dale Coyne Racing backup car at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “I had a pain in my stomach immediately. It also brought back kind of like a deja vu of (James) Hinchcliffe’s crash (in 2015). Yeah, I certainly was holding my breath.”
Davison’s mind began to race. Three of his four Verizon IndyCar Series starts were for Coyne, although it had been two years since his last one, when he finished 27th in the Indy 500. But might Australian Davison, 30, who was 16th in the 2014 Indy 500 for KV Racing Technology, get the call?
Bourdais suffered multiple pelvic fractures as well as a hip fracture, for which the Frenchman underwent successful surgery at IU Health Methodist Hospital. Although Bourdais suggested he might be healed by the season-ending GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma, Coyne didn’t see the point to his driver returning for one race and ruled him out for the season.
Davison thought the first replacement option would be Townsend Bell, a 10-time Indy 500 starter since 2006 with a top finish of fourth for KV Racing Technology in 2009.
“I thought Townsend would be my biggest challenge, if he wanted to do it, because obviously he’s had some really good runs here,” Davison said. “He’s obviously pulled the pin on driving full time, but I do know that if an opportunity presented itself and he was able to jump into a situation where he feels he could win the race, that he would consider it. And Townsend is phenomenal at raising sponsorship, as well.”
The longer the situation played out, the more Davison thought it wasn’t going to happen. Then his phone rang at about 9 a.m. Sunday morning. It was Coyne.
“He told me to come meet him in the garage,” Davison said. “Clearly he’s interested, (that’s) what I knew. For a number of us drivers, we were really hoping we would get the call-up for at least 12 to 16 hours or so. There was a lot of probably nervous energy built and a lot of thinking going through all of our heads. Who’s my competition? Who’s likely to get in the seat?”
The team would need time to convert the Bourdais No. 18T backup car from a road/street course set-up to a superspeedway configuration. And Davison got busy, too.
“Once I got the go-ahead, I had a totally different state of mind,” he said. “I’ve done all my medicals, but I’ve got to get my INDYCAR license, I need to call the sponsors and tell them, I need to get my helmet, I need to get fitted in the car.
“I was here at the track until 11 p.m. (Sunday) doing the seat fit, and then here at 8 a.m. this morning. So, I mean, yeah, it’s been a pretty stressful 48 hours with not a lot of sleep and my mind racing a lot. And then especially watching Pole Day unfold yesterday, they’re out there running 232 mph, and I haven’t even turned a lap. Talk about a contrast. (Laughs.) It was bizarre with the state of mind I was in. Of course, I’m excited to be in the race (but) for a very unfortunate reason.”
Davison resides in the same Miami building as his new teammate, rookie Ed Jones. While Davison is a 2009 Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires championship runner-up, Jones won the series title last year.
Jones, who will start Sunday’s race from 11th, ranked second in the final extended practice session Monday as his No. 19 Boy Scouts of America Honda had a top speed of 228.118 mph. Although the team still has a lot of work to do on Davison’s car, he completed a 30-minute refresher before the season and then ran 88 laps with a top speed of 223.670 mph that ranked 28th.
“We ran conservative, a lot of downforce on the car,” Davison said. “We didn’t run in traffic as much as I would have liked, but we had to work on the balance and the aero trim, as well. Even though we finished 28th, we’re stronger than that, but we’re nothing stellar. We know we’ve got a bit of a hill to climb with what our situation is after the accident and the equipment that’s available.”
Although he quickly became comfortable on track — “Two years was like yesterday” — he alluded to more work that needed to be done in Gasoline Alley before returning for Friday’s final one-hour Miller Lite Carb Day session.
“The body fit. We had brand-new Dallara side pods on the car with no body fit done,” Davison said. “We're kind of pulling a bit of a parachute. Obviously we can only try to make the car handle as well as we can. What terminal velocity we're going to have is what we're stuck with.”
The 33rd starter conceded he's realistic about what will likely happen on Race Day, but he's not without optimism.
“If we’re able to make some good improvement between now and Carb Day and the race, hopefully those expectations will go up,” Davison said. “I guess from the outset, it was always going to be like this. We were going to run conservative. The car was not going to be as well-prepared as it will be come Race Day. We just got it together and went practicing. All they could do is just put it together and no fine details to find more speed.
“My expectations are modest, but I certainly think we’ll be able to finish in the top half of the field and possibly in the top 10 if all things going right.”
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