Why "small team" feel at Coyne gives Johnson hope of a "few podiums" in rookie IndyCar season
May 25th, 2008. It was the date of Scott Dixon's only Indianapolis 500 victory thus far, after he held off Vitor Meira and Marco Andretti in the closing laps and continued to cement his legacy as one of the all-time greats.
That very same day in St. Petersburg, Florida, Nikita Johnson was welcomed into the world. Now, Johnson will line-up alongside Dixon on the grid for next year's 111th Running of the Indianapolis 500 after he was confirmed for a full IndyCar campaign with Dale Coyne Racing in 2027 off the back of his title-winning season in Indy NXT.
In some ways, it was almost destiny that a driver born on Indianapolis 500 day in an IndyCar-centric city would reach IndyCar some day.
And the poetic nature of Johnson's IndyCar debut is only made more special by the fact his first appearance will be made on the Streets of St. Petersburg, just five minutes away from where Johnson grew up.
"It's very special. I've been looking forward to it ever since I knew this was going to happen," reflected Johnson. "Made my debut in pretty much every series at St. Pete. It's very cool to kind of have this tradition keep going."
Before then though, there's plenty of work for Johnson and his new employers, Dale Coyne Racing to do and the first such steps were complete in late October at Barber Motorsports Park, when Johnson tested an Indy car for the first time with the team, as he completed a driver evaluation day alongside Alex Dunne.
It gave Johnson his first such opportunity to understand the intricacies of the machinery he'll drive next season and gave some crucial insight into what the biggest learning curves are when making the step up from Indy NXT.
"I'd say from the test I just had to get used to braking," Johnson added. "That was my first time driving with carbon brakes. Just getting used to that will not take a while, but need to get in the car. With limited test days, we're going to be working on that pretty heavily just to get on it. I think before St. Pete, it should be out of the way and not an issue."
Even before the Barber test, Johnson had been long-embedded into the team. Dale Coyne was one of the first people to congratulate Johnson in Victory Lane at Laguna Seca after he sealed the Indy NXT Championship and the pair were seen together at the recent IR-28 test at Sebring International Raceway.
Johnson attributed the delay in his announcement to trying to secure budget and finalise the smaller details of the deal, something he described as "putting the pieces of the puzzle together". With the deal now finalised, Johnson and Coyne can start looking forward to next season.
With the announcement, the Floridian becomes the latest addition to the lineage of drivers that Coyne has provided a first opportunity to in IndyCar. Coyne has a strong track record with rookie drivers too, several of which are now among the most competitive in the series, which include David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, Santino Ferrucci and most notably, Álex Palou.
Palou joined Coyne in 2020 with support from Super Formula outfit Team Goh and impressed in his rookie season, highlighted by a maiden podium at Road America in the third race of the year. It earned the Spaniard a move to Chip Ganassi Racing the following year where Palou has since earned five championships in six seasons.
It sets the perfect example of what a driver can do at the team and gives Johnson a target to chase when he looks ahead for his goals of his rookie season.
"I look at it as getting a few podiums, which is always possible. It's going to be hard to get a win just because IndyCar is such a challenging series. If you could get a win in your rookie year, I think that would be amazing.
"How I really look at it is I believe Alex Palou finished 16th in the championship. A lot of rookies have a tough time in their first year. They finish like 18th to 20-something. My main goal is to be Rookie of the Year and top 15 or 16 in the championship my first year."
Such a result would mark a significant turnaround for the team after an underwhelming 2026 season, where Coyne's two entries could only manage 19th and 22nd in the standings, despite Dennis Hauger still being able to win Rookie of the Year. Grosjean achieved the team's only podium of the year with a second-place effort on the Streets of Markham, but the team remain winless since Sébastian Bourdais took a trip to Victory Lane in St. Petersburg back in 2018.
However, given Coyne's track record with rookies in the past, it gives Johnson even further inspiration that himself and the team could spring a surprise next season, even if 2026 only yielded six top 10 finishes for the team across two cars.
"It gives me a lot of confidence that we'll do well. I think we worked really good together at the test. I'm very happy with everyone in the team. Everybody is just amazing. It seems that they care so much about the car and racing in IndyCar.
"Even though we're going to be a small team, I think there's a lot of passion behind us. Same like with Cape. I think we're not going to prove people wrong but do pretty good things together, same how we did with Cape."
In many ways, Johnson's IndyCar outfit has a very similar style to that of his Indy NXT team - Cape Motorsports. The team are owned by brothers Nicholas and Dominic Cape and have been renowned for their ability to nurture young talent through the US single-seater ladder at lower levels. Such success did not come immediately in Indy NXT, but through partnerships with Andretti Global and now Ed Carpenter Racing, the team have accelerated into one of the frontrunners in the series
Johnson was a large part of that success, but teammate Matteo Nannini also found Victory Lane twice in 2026, with team's most notable result being a Nannini led 1-2 at Nashville Superspeedway, the first time the team had ever achieved such a result.
Despite only running two cars and having notably less resources than some of the outfits, such as Andretti, Chip Ganassi Racing and Abel Motorsports who ran four cars and HMD Motorsports who had eight cars affiliated with their programme, Cape and Johnson proved competitive week-in, week-out, which was ultimately their modus operandi into winning a championship.
Johnson finished no lower than eighth in any of the 17 races and claimed podiums in over half of those in a brilliantly consistent title campaign, even if neither he, or Cape, were given a chance prior to the season of achieving such success.
That small-team feel was what Johnson attributed much of his success to in 2026 and that similar dynamic was something vital when deciding his steps into IndyCar.
"I've always liked smaller teams. That's how my whole career has been. I think we proved a lot of people wrong last year with Cape. They're obviously a very strong team but also a small team. Nobody really thought about us as being frontrunners. Dale Coyne has had a lot of success. It's where I love to be. I feel very comfortable after the test.
"I seem to get along with everybody on a small team better. I just like being the underdog a little bit. That's how I always like being. I like being humble and not being noticed by everyone, just doing my thing.
"The team has a lot of passion behind it. I think doesn't matter how big you are, how small your team is, as long as everybody there loves to come to work, loves to come race on the weekends, has a lot of passion, you can end up doing very well. I think we're going to have a really good bond. I'm just excited to start working with them."
"I just really hope that I'm able to give them a few podiums next year and a few good points so we can celebrate their hard work because they work really, really hard."
Next year will certainly be a learning year for Johnson, albeit he still has a Rookie of the Year title to chase as he battles fellow Indy NXT graduate Josh Pierson for the crown. However, there's a longer-term plan in Johnson's mind given the timing that he steps up to IndyCar in. With 2027 marking the final year of the DW-12 chassis, it gives Johnson the opportunity to learn the IndyCar-specific details before heading into 2028 with a clean slate, with the entire field having to adapt to a new chassis.
Johnson saw the IR-28 in his recent visit to Sebring and is already looking forward to the prospect of competing with IndyCar's latest innovation.
"It looks like a really good car. I'm excited about it. What I'm most excited for is that I get my rookie year out in the old car, then it's kind of a level playing field to speak with the '28 car. I don't have to go into new car, new series, new tracks, I can just focus on learning a new car.
"That was one of the big things why we pushed really hard to go win Indy NXT this year in one year, get my rookie year before the new car comes out."
For now though, Johnson has a rookie year to focus on utilising the existing chassis. Although his goals are clearly far beyond what he can achieve at Dale Coyne Racing, there's no doubting that the American feels like he's found the best place possible to succeed in his rookie year.
"Dale Coyne is probably the best place you can go for your rookie season. Everyone there is very welcoming. A lot of rookies have gone there. Just completely enjoyed the space, love the team.
"He was also pretty much the first person to congratulate me after I won the championship. I respect people like that. Dale is just such a good guy. He's very down to earth. He's extremely smart about the car. I can talk to him about anything engineering-wise on the car.
"It's just a real very, very good team, very good group of people. Yeah, everything about it led me to choosing them and them choosing me, so I'm very thankful for it."
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