Energetic 'Sulli' Relishes Chance to Return to '500,' IndyCar with Coyne, Vasser
May 25, 2018 | By Phillip B. Wilson, Indianapolis Motor Speedway
Name recognition in Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan often includes an easy assumption about Sullivan.
“Is it Danny Sullivan?” Coyne said, referring to the 1985 Indianapolis 500 winner. “Everybody keeps asking us that.”
No, it’s James Sullivan, or “Sulli” as he has been known since college at Baylor. That recognition often leads to another question.
“Are you Danny’s son?” Sullivan said. “Absolutely not. But I’m fine with that. At the end of the day, I’m not here for people knowing who I am. I want to bring home trophies. The rest will take care of itself. We’re in this to bring home hardware.”
Sullivan and partner Jimmy Vasser, the 1996 Indy car series champion, were partners with KV Racing Technology when Tony Kanaan won the 2013 Indianapolis 500 for the team. After being away from the Verizon IndyCar Series last year, Sullivan and Vasser teamed up with Coyne this season to support four-time Indy car series champion Sebastien Bourdais, whose No. 18 Team SealMaster Honda starts fifth in the Indianapolis 500 presented by PennGrade Motor Oil on Sunday.
So who is this Sullivan?
“He’s a racer,” Coyne said.
In the sense that Sullivan, 38, has the same competitive spirit as his partners, he brings the same high-energy input to the operation.
“They’ve brought sponsorships in,” Coyne said. “They do a better job at that than I do, and I do a pretty good job running a team. So together, it’s a pretty good team.”
Sullivan admittedly took an unusual path to being on a pit stand at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He can thank the music group Third Eye Blind for his racing introduction. As a college student, he attended the band’s concert in Houston, which gave out general admission tickets to the 2001 Champ Car Grand Prix of Houston.
He didn’t remember who won and was unaware that Vasser would prevail in that race the next year. Sullivan saw enough to go to Kansas for an Indy Racing League race, where he was impressed by Tomas Scheckter. He told his wife, Amanda, that Scheckter would be his driver if he put a team together.
The experience became even more memorable when Sullivan got Scheckter’s autograph. The session had ended with Sullivan at the front of a line, and after seeing the fan persist, Scheckter motioned him in beyond the ropes.
“I felt like his persona matched my persona, how he carried himself and how he went for it,” Sullivan said. “I’ve got one shot.”
Sullivan showed the signed Scheckter hero card to the driver when they met in 2009 to discuss one driving for the other. Sullivan met Vasser the next year at Texas Motor Speedway.
“Together the sum is certainly greater than its parts,” Sullivan said of his bond with Vasser, who is godfather to his son.
Although he had cut his teeth in Supercross, motocross and the X Games, Sullivan eventually focused on a dream to run a car in the Indy 500. And it was just to do it one time, which occurred in 2011, when Scheckter finished eighth in his final Indy 500 start with SH Racing and KV Racing Technology.
“To me, there was never much planning beyond that,” Sullivan said. “It was a destination, never to win it, never to have a full-season entry but to have a car in the ‘500’ with my name on it.”
It wasn’t until Kanaan’s victory in 2013 that Sullivan got the itch to go for more. The epiphany came to him at the Victory Celebration. Why not be a part of a full-time team?
“It felt like that was how the story was supposed to end, but that’s when it was really beginning,” Sullivan said. “I want to do it. I want to go compete and make it a huge part of my life.”
After SH Racing was a part of KV’s full-time effort with Bourdais from 2014 through 2016, KV disbanded. That meant a one-year detour. Opportunities presented themselves to keep racing in 2017, but Sullivan and Vasser waited.
They wanted the right opportunity with a competitor. The opportunity to reunite with Bourdais made joining Coyne all the inviting.
“I have so much admiration for Dale because he’s been doing this as a team owner almost as long as I’ve been alive,” Sullivan said. “Jimmy and I, our desire was not to go at it alone. You can see it’s become so competitive, it’s taken a village to do this properly. For us, our attraction to Dale was the staying power. If you’re building a house, you don’t build it on sand, you build it on a concrete slab.”
During that year away, Sullivan took his 6-year-old daughter, Hadley McLaren, to a trampoline park. They eventually got into a dodgeball match. “Sulli” had too much pent-up energy.
“I pegged my daughter in the face with a ball,” Sullivan said. “Amanda said, ‘Good heavens, you need to get a race team back together because you are way too full of some kind of intestinal fortitude.’ It was time for ‘Sulli’ to get back racing.”
He’s enjoyed a sentimental return to Indianapolis Motor Speedway this month. He brought with him his 2013 Indy 500 winner’s ring. He keeps it clean and polished. It signifies more than just T.K.’s finest moment.
“That right there means that I went farther than I expected to go,” Sullivan said.