Vasser savoring Ferrucci's strong Indy run

Building off of a stellar debut in 2019 where he charged to seventh, Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan’s Santino Ferrucci produced more fireworks at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Sunday, taking his No. 18 Honda from deep in the field to a career-best fourth-place finish at the Brickyard.

Starting 19th, the sophomore IndyCar driver from Connecticut went on a passing spree to improve 15 spots – more than all but one competitor in the field of 33 – to place ahead of Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, among others on Sunday.

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Outside of Ferrucci’s bold performance in the race, team co-owner Jimmy Vasser, the 1996 CART IndyCar Series champion, called out the 22-year-old’s contributions in the final practice session for setting the fourth-place result in motion.

“We had a really good Carb Day, (Ferrucci’s race engineer) Olivier (Boisson) made some good moves on the mechanical side with setup, and I was really impressed with how Santino played a part when we tried some damper stuff that was pretty far out of his box,” Vasser told RACER. “He was asking for pretty sensitive changes, which was new, got what he wanted, climbed out of the car there happy, and I have to give big props to Olivier for making the big mechanical changes, and Santino for helping to get it there. The car was working.”

Armed with speed, Vasser watched as his driver completed a series of passes that required immense faith.

“Santino’s bravado and restarts were huge, and his work on the high line really paid off,” he said. “He went backward in the pits a little bit and had to make up some of those positions again, but the math speaks for itself. He did it, and he did it with a good machine. It’s no secret we ran a little more downforce that others from where we started. And it got more difficult to pass that farther up you got, but we thought we had a chance towards the end before it went yellow.”