Along with Tony Kanaan’s experience and proven success on the IndyCar ovals, A.J. Foyt Racing announced Tuesday its plan to add another dose of veteran leadership, along with rookie flare, to fill out the team’s two-car program for 2020.
Four-time CART series champion Sebastien Bourdais will steer No. 14 in the first three races of the season — St. Pete, Barber and Long Beach — along with Portland in the season’s penultimate race to cap a four-race run in his first-ever season with Foyt.
He’ll be joined by 26-year-old Canadian driver Dalton Kellett, who, after four consecutive seasons running in the Indy Lights championship, will make the jump up the final rung of the Road to Indy ladder. The rookie will drive the remaining road and street courses in the No. 14 car, eight in all, and will also man a third-car entry for the team in the 104th-running of the Indianapolis 500. There, Kanaan will drive the No. 14, with Kellett in a car number to be announced at a later date.
After a four-year stretch of running two full-season cars, plus an Indy-only entry, from 2015-18, the team had taken a step back a year ago in only running Kanaan and Matheus Leist around the famed 2.5-mile oval course at IMS.
But with this combination of driving talent, which also includes veteran Charlie Kimball running a full season in the No. 4 car, team president Larry Foyt said in a news release he believes the team that has struggled to produce long stints of consistency in years past is finally back on track.
“Coming off a season we were disappointed with, changes were inevitable,” he said. “I believe adding a multi-time champion like Sebastien Bourdais to our team will help us as we regroup and work to regain a competitive position.
“And Dalton Kellett is a young driver who is intelligent and motivated, and with the experience around him, we feel he has the potential to show great things. Altogether, the No. 14 car has an intriguing lineup, and I’m excited to see how it plays out.”
Bourdais, who will make an appearance with Kellett and Kimball in next week’s open test at Circuit of the Americas in Austin, will return to the IndyCar grid next month on a track that produced his only two wins during his three-year stint with Dale Coyne Racing. He won in 2017 and 2018, but lasted just 11 laps a year ago before issues with his Honda engine ended his day.
Tuesday’s news comes just more than two months after it appeared the future for Bourdais’ IndyCar career could be in jeopardy. News broke in late November that he had been dropped from the final year of his contract to drive the No. 18 car for Dale Coyne, Jimmy Vasser and James Sullivan.
Though Bourdais followed that up by announcing he had landed a full-season contract in the IMSA WeatherTech Sportscar championship with Mustang Sampling Racing, at the time it seemed like a consolation for someone who made a big splash early in his career in CART and then returned for another nine-year stint after two years in Formula One from 2008-09.
These four races with Foyt give him a launch pad with which to try to stay relevant in the eyes of IndyCar owners who increasingly have been looking toward younger talent that comes with eager sponsors rather than more experienced drivers of late.
“I am such a lucky man, starting my IndyCar career driving for Paul Newman and Carl Haas, and now I get to drive for A.J. Foyt,” Bourdais said in the release. “Staying in the IndyCar series seemed like a long-shot back in November, and my teammates and I will be working very hard to deliver the results this organization deserves.”
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Additionally, Bourdais told IndyStar that he’s in the process of seeking additional IndyCar ride opportunities for 2020 as he “tries to race in as many events as possible this year.” With his full-season IMSA schedule, Bourdais only has potential conflicts with Detroit (though he’ll be there racing IMSA), Richmond (overlaps with Watkins Glen), Iowa (overlaps with the Northeast Grand Prix) and Gateway (overlaps with the Michelin GT Challenge).
That leaves eight potential IndyCar races, including the 500, where he’s shown flashes of brilliance, as open spots where he could find an additional ride.
On the other hand, Kellett joins a ballooning list of young names in IndyCar for 2020 that includes three true full-season rookies (Oliver Askew, Alex Palou and Rinus VeeKay) as well as four second-year full-season guys (Colton Herta, Santino Ferrucci, Marcus Ericsson and Felix Rosenqvist) and two others with just a handful of races under their belts (Patricio O’Ward and Ben Hanley).
Kellet joins Askew and VeeKay as last year’s competitors in Indy Lights who managed to make the jump to the highest level of American open-wheel racing for 2020, though his results don’t quite match the series champ (Askew) and runner-up (VeeKay) who together won 13 of the 18 races.
