Vautier replaces Huertas for Plainfield-based Dale Coyne Racing in Indy 500

SPEEDWAY, Ind. – Even Donald Davidson, the walking, talking record book of everything concerning the Indianapolis 500, can’t recall a month like the one Tristan Vautier has experienced en route to a seat in Sunday’s race.

Vautier, a 25-year-old resident of France who finished 16th as a rookie two years ago, didn’t have a ride last year and was sure he wouldn’t have one this year, even when Plainfield’s Dale Coyne called awhile back.

Coyne needed someone to qualify James Davison’s car last weekend because Davison was committed to a sports car race. So Vautier jumped in Davison’s car and got it in the field. But running in the 500 was out because Vautier was slated to run a car for his father-in-law in a road race in England the same day.

Then James Hinchcliffe hit the wall and was seriously injured in Monday’s practice, and Vautier was under consideration to run his repaired car in his place.

That ride went to Ryan Briscoe on Wednesday. Now, Vautier was sure he was out and was at O’Hare, 90 minutes from boarding his plane to London, when his phone rang.

It was Coyne.

“I was asked to stay, there may be a ride,” Vautier said.

The ride was that of Carlos Huertas, another of Coyne’s drivers, whose inner ear imbalance was flaring up. Someone with vertigo can’t handle an oval race averaging 220 mph, and IndyCar officials ruled him out of the 500.

Vautier called his team and asked if he could run it in Huertas’ place.

“They said I could race, seize the opportunity that opened up,” Vautier said. “They would find a replacement driver. That’s really cool for them to let me do that.”

Just like that, Vautier was in, driving for the team he qualified a different car for. One Alamo rental car and drive down Interstate 65 later, he was back in Gasoline Alley.

“It’a a bit of a roller coaster of emotions,” Vautier said. “The qualifying deal, it came together the Tuesday before and I was in the car Thursday, but this is a different deal. There’s not a lot of prep time for the race. We had one hour, and I made the most of it.”

Vautier ran 43 laps, the seventh-most of the 33 drivers, in Friday’s final practice session, with a fast lap of 225.687 mph, 18th best, and not far behind teammate Davison (226.578). Pippa Mann, the third car in the Coyne stable, ran 223.589, next-to-last on the chart.

Coyne’s entire season has been crazy. With Justin Wilson moving to Andretti Autosport and without the sponsorship by the Boy Scouts, Coyne had to go back to the driver-with-check system he’d used for years. Huertas ran in three races, including the Grand Prix of Indianapolis on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s road course.

Francesco Dracone ran in all five before the 500, but he was replaced by Davison for the biggest race of all. Rocky Moran Jr. was slated to run in Huertas’ place in Long Beach but broke a thumb in a crash and was replaced by Conor Daly.

Meanwhile, Mann brought sponsorship from the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation and is driving for Coyne in the 500 for the second straight year. Her month was enlivened by a crash on May 13 where she bounced off two walls in a Turn 4 spin and hit the pit road attenuator to boot, right side first. That left her with a big limp, and less track time. The lack of experience, she said, might have been a contributing factor.

“Sometimes you’re in a position where you’re that little bit too far back to see what’s happening around the next corner and it just catches you,” Mann said. “I think because I don’t get to race week in and week out, I don’t have that experience level to draw from.”

Mann will be driving in her third 500 and eighth IndyCar race. Vautier will be in his 20th series race. It will be Davison’s second 500 and fourth start overall.

That’s little experience for any 500, much less the 99th edition, which pole-sitter Scott Dixon will lead to the green flag at 11:17 a.m. Mann’s crash was one of five major accidents during practice this month.

Hinchcliffe’s nearly killed him, but superb work by the IndyCar safety crew and doctors with the series and Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis saved him after a massive loss of blood when a suspension piece went through his leg and pelvis, cutting his femoral artery. He’s recovering at Methodist but won’t race again this season.

The other three accidents featured the cars of Helio Castroneves, Josef Newgarden and Ed Carpenter somersaulting through the air when they ended up backward. IndyCar officials ordered both the Chevrolet camp – including that trio – and the Honda side to change bodywork for the remainder of the month. The only accident since has been Hinchcliffe’s, and his car was not airborne.

But those accidents, and the fear of serious injury not only to a driver, but what could happen if a car somehow vaulted over the fence and landed in the stands, have made the atmosphere entering this 500-mile race the most foreboding since the 1973 edition, a month where two drivers and a mechanic died, and a third driver and several spectators were seriously injured.