Rookies Abel, Hauger eager to keep building up their Indy 500 knowledge base

Both Dennis Hauger and Jacob Abel have expressed confidence in their setups ahead of the 110th running of the Indianapolis 500, but still are daunted by their unfamiliarity with the event.

Abel, who last year ran the whole season for Dale Coyne Racing, practiced but ultimately failed to qualify at Indy, and this year will roll off from 30th in an Abel Motorsports entry. Hauger, meanwhile, races for Coyne full-time in 2026, and will start alongside Abel from the middle of the 10th row. Although both drivers competed in Indy NXT – Abel was runner-up in points in 2024, while Hauger won the title in ’25 – neither have race experience on Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s oval. The feeder series’ marquee event, the Freedom 100, was axed from the schedule back in 2021.

Both drivers admitted that despite Indy featuring several days of practice, it’s difficult for inexperienced drivers to know when they’ve extracted the most potential from their cars.

“I think it's tricky for sure,” said Abel. “You saw it on Monday [with Alexander Rossi’s crash], it's hard to say when it's too much until it's like really too much. Yeah, it bites for sure.

“You have to respect this place. I think for me personally, I'm just taking what experience I do have from ovals and stuff, but I think even still, this place is so much different than any other oval we ever race at.

“Then you add in how extended the practice is and all of that, you have so much time to work up to it. Like Dennis said, we're so used to very quick weekends, and you have to be up to speed on lap 2 and just be maximizing everything fully to the limit.

“Here you do need to be exceptionally patient because the teams work year-round on making these cars as good as they possibly can, and you don't want to hurt that… You just need to take care of everything.

“For me it's leaning on everyone around me, leaning on the data, times, and all of that a little bit, but I think more so it's just kind of how you feel in traffic, how you're able to kind of suck up to the people in front of you, passing people, or people passing you easily or not. I think it's a lot of feel for sure.

“But yeah, it's a good point. It definitely is hard to know when is too much without fully going over the limit."

Hauger agreed, saying, “I feel the same – you're kind of trying to chase, and also as a rookie, figure out what you need around here to be as fast as possible, how to get close in traffic and suck up and get past on the straights. So there's definitely different things that go into it throughout the test days, also with the conditions.

“I feel like we've definitely worked more for the race package throughout this week. So I think we knew what we had in qualifying, and I think we're in a window where we know what we have when we get to the race. It's just about making it predictable when we get to the day, and the conditions might be different, so that can play a big part."