1000 Words: Watkins Glen 2009

Today marks an anniversary and one you may be surprised to hear:

Ten years ago today, Dale Coyne Racing got its first IndyCar victory at Watkins Glen with Justin Wilson the driver responsible for the triumph.

A decade is not a long time but it is long enough to look back and at least have perspective on life and how things have changed and how the present is not really all that different.

In 2009, things were tense in IndyCar. The series had finished its first season of reunification, which was good, but people were ready for more change. A new car was not really in the picture, but it was on everyone's mind, and Honda was the sole engine manufacture, which was disappointing.

IndyCar had a new television deal with five races on ABC, including the Indianapolis 500, and the remainder of the season was on Versus, a cable sports network rebranded from the Outdoor Life Network, that had gained attention in recent years for picking up the National Hockey League after it came back from its lockout and had the Tour de France off the heels of Lance Armstrong's success.

The recession was settling in. Tony George was ousted from power at Hulman & Co. and the next step for IndyCar was not clear.

On the racetrack, Team Penske or Chip Ganassi Racing had won nine consecutive races entering Watkins Glen, ten if you count the non-championship race at Surfers Paradise at the end of 2008. Those two teams had gained a stranglehold on IndyCar since Dallara and Honda became the only providers in town. While Andretti Green Racing had won the championship in 2007, AGR had taken a step back.

There were many players we were hoping could step up and take the fight to Penske and Ganassi. Newman/Haas Racing had won two races the year before but Paul Newman died in September 2008 and Carl Haas was getting older. Dan Wheldon was with Panther Racing, a team that had recently won championships and had National Guard sponsorship but the team couldn't seem to piece it together on the road and street courses, which was an increasing portion of the schedule.

Far from the minds of everyone as a possible contender was Dale Coyne Racing.

Dale Coyne Racing was celebrating its 25th year on the grid but longevity was really all there was to celebrate. The team had yet to win a race and the team had never had a driver finish better than seventh in the championship.

Dale Coyne Racing's first podium came at the U.S. 500 in 1996, the team's 142nd race, with Roberto Moreno finishing third, albeit one lap down, almost 12 years after the team's first race. It would be another eight years before the team picked up anymore silverware. In the team's 260th race at Laguna Seca in 2004, Oriol Servià was the third place finisher.

A spell of great success occurred for DCR with Bruno Junqueira in 2007 in Champ Car's lone season with the Panoz DP01 chassis. The team got its first runner-up finish in the team's 301st race at Zolder with Junqueira finishing second to Sébastien Bourdais. Junqueira followed that result up with a pair of third-place finishes at Assen and Surfers Paradise.

In 2009, Justin Wilson joined the team after spending the first year of reunification with Newman/Haas Racing and Wilson picked up a victory at Belle Isle.

Wilson had finished third in the season opener at St. Petersburg and he led the most laps that day after jumping to the lead at the start. Cautions and pit strategy cycled him down the order to third with Ryan Briscoe taking the victory. Despite the strong opening race, Wilson entered Watkins Glen with his best finish in the previous seven races being 14th with three retirements in that span and he had not finished on the lead lap since the season opener.

Wilson qualified second at Watkins Glen, next to Briscoe, and it matched his best qualifying effort of the season, which came at St. Petersburg.

Briscoe held the lead at the start and Wilson slotted into second. Wilson pressured Briscoe into the bus stop on each of the first two laps. On lap four, Wilson was able to make his move for the lead into the bus stop.

Most of the opening stint saw Briscoe remain within a second of Wilson but the only time Briscoe made a look for the lead was when Wilson got caught behind Marco Andretti after Andretti had returned to the track after making pit stop for a cut tire. Wilson successfully held off Briscoe and once he put Andretti a lap down into the boot his lead was secure.

The top two pulled away from the rest of the field with Mario Moraes over 9.5 seconds behind those two in third when Wilson made his first pit stop on lap 19. Later that lap, Richard Antinucci would stop on course and bring out a caution, catching out Briscoe. Wilson would inherit the lead after the remaining cars made their first pit stops and Briscoe shuffled back to 11th.

This wasn't a race where Wilson had to make a daring move with three laps to go to take the lead. Wilson qualified at the front, took the lead early and pulled away for the most part in this race. He stayed at the front. Outside of the opening stint with Briscoe, Wilson did not face much of a challenge in this race.

The day got interesting when Hideki Mutoh had an accident with eight laps to go. The final restart came with six laps to go and Wilson got the jump on Briscoe and he quickly reestablished the gap he had prior to the restart. He had a 3.5-second lead with four laps to go.

From there it was near certainty Wilson was going to win the bar barring an error or a mechanical let down. With the team on the pit wall, Wilson crossed the finish line 4.99 seconds ahead of Briscoe.

It was Dale Coyne Racing's 330th IndyCar race. It had been 25 years of being the back marker, taking a spot on the grid with drivers most people had no clue about before and most of those drivers would leave IndyCar without anyone even realizing they were there.

When you are in something for 25 years you are bound to have a glorious day in the sun. Life is a numbers game, the more attempts you take, the more spins of the wheel, the more lottery tickets you buy the greater the chance you are going to hit the jackpot.

Dale Coyne Racing had their day on July 5, 2009 with Justin Wilson but it wasn't luck and it wasn't one thing that led to the victory.

It was a combination of everything: The driver, the crew, the starting position, the strategy, the track.

It was 25 years of waiting for Dale Coyne.

It was Justin Wilson's brief stint in Formula One leading to a trip across the United States and joining Champ Car. It was reunification happening when it did and Newman/Haas Racing moving on when it did.

It was Team Penske picking Will Power over Wilson when Hélio Castroneves had his tax evasion trial and countless of other things in this world that have been forgotten that put Wilson in the car for Coyne on that day and led to a watershed moment for that team and IndyCar.

I remember after that 2009 season everyone was pointing out the disparity in IndyCar with Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing having won 16 of 17 races. Of course, the one outlier from that season was Dale Coyne Racing won a race and it showed with the right pieces any team could win in IndyCar. There were still things that had to be fixed: A new chassis was needed, more engine manufactures, a formal ladder system was non-existent at that time and that television deal in 2009 was far from a home run for the series.

Looking back on the numbers from that season, it doesn't paint a dire situation many suggested and it doesn't seem as uncompetitive as it once did.

Penske and Ganassi won 16 of 17 races but the championship lead was never greater than 25 points. The championship lead was ten points or fewer after 14 of 17 races. The championship lead changed after 14 of 17 races. Dario Franchitti won the title but never led the championship after consecutive races. Franchitti only led the championship after five races and the greatest his championship lead ever was in 2009 was ten points after the final race. As much as we didn't like having two teams winning 94.117% of the races, how many other seasons will match what 2009 produced? I think we might have to revisit that season finale come October.

I wanted this to be a celebration of what I feel many would consider the bright spot of the 2009 season. I think this is also a good time to look at what Dale Coyne Racing has become in the last ten years.

Dale Coyne Racing is still the minnow on the grid. Coyne's team hasn't grown into a power house. It isn't fielding three cars with loads of sponsorship. The team isn't employing 200 people. Coyne doesn't have a wind tunnel and his team isn't developing the latest dampers. The team hasn't won the championship or the Indianapolis 500 but Dale Coyne Racing is a threat at every race.

There have been ups and downs in the decade since Dale Coyne Racing's first victory. It has had to chase the money and bring in less heralded drivers but it has also brought in top-tier talent that took the team to the top.

Wilson left after 2009 but returned in 2012 and won at Texas that year, though his car did have an unapproved body part on his car. The following year, Wilson finished sixth in the championship and had four podium finishes. While Wilson didn't win in 2013, Mike Conway did with the team in his first start for the organization. The year after that, Carlos Huertas won at Houston, albeit it in a time-shortened street race where the final restart was nixed because Graham Rahal ran into the back of Tony Kanaan before the field ever took the green flag and Huertas had a fuel cell that was larger than IndyCar regulations, but it still counts as a victory in the record book.

The last three seasons have seen Sébastien Bourdais be the rock for Dale Coyne Racing. In the process a handful of promising drivers have come into the team from Ed Jones to Pietro Fittipaldi to Santino Ferrucci. All three had solid results; Jones went on to drive for Ganassi and is now with Ed Carpenter Racing. Fittipaldi is a Haas F1 reserve driver and is racing for Audi in the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters. Only time will tell what Ferrucci's next move will be.

A championship is just too far out of grasp for Dale Coyne Racing but the team is no longer filling the grid. In the near future the team may have to revert to its old practices of finding a driver who was below average in Formula Two and running him for two years because he keeps the lights on but in a similar way we have seen tanking be a necessary evil in other North American sports, Coyne's driver selection may be the team's long-term way of staying successful. Coyne can trade one or two years in the dumps for four or five years of overachieving.

A lot of teams have come and gone in the last decade of IndyCar, let alone in the 35 years Dale Coyne Racing has been entering races. It might be surprising to some that Dale Coyne Racing has been able to hold on this long but the constant presence of Dale Coyne Racing shows the possibilities in IndyCar. Done the right way a team can survive for multiple decades without ever having a flashy sponsor and that same team can become victorious and a contender at every race.

We close with Justin Wilson. He isn't here today to celebrate this anniversary but I am sure he is in the hearts and minds of countless people and he has been for sometime. Wilson never got that big break at the right time but we saw that even with second-tier equipment he could find a way to come out on top.

Seven victories does not seem like a lot to celebrate but Wilson took RuSport, an Atlantics team and made it a championship contender in Champ Car behind Newman/Haas Racing. Wilson won with Newman/Haas Racing in the 2008 year, the transition year for the Champ Car teams and the only other driver to win for a transitioning team that year was his teammate Graham Rahal. Wilson won twice for Coyne and for a brief moment had the team on the cusp of being a championship challenger.

Justin Wilson put Dale Coyne Racing on the map. Without Wilson, who knows how we would view Dale Coyne Racing? Who knows if Sébastien Bourdais would be there? It is fitting that Wilson is the most experienced driver in the history of the team having made 69 starts with the organization. Bourdais may surpass that mark; he has the third most starts at 44 after Road America and shout out to Michel Jourdain, Jr., who is second on 56 starts.

Bourdais may beat Wilson's 69 starts, he needs just one more victory to break their tie for most victories in Dale Coyne Racing history but the first great driver in the history of the team will always be Wilson. Wilson laid the foundation for Bourdais' current success and for any future success at the organization.

I hate talking about what might have been because we can never know for certain. The only thing I feel certain about is Justin Wilson would still be a popular face in IndyCar circles. He would bring that beaming smile to the track and brighten the day for every fan, official, reporter and crew member.

It doesn't feel that long ago but a lot has changed in IndyCar, some for worse but some for better. Watkins Glen went away and came back and went away again. Road America returned and Richmond disappeared. Franchitti retired and Dixon is reigning champion.

I think we are happier than we were when it comes to IndyCar. I think things are better. It feels better. It kind of crazy how far you can go in the blink of an eye.