Dale Coyne built Sébastien Bourdais a championship-winning Verizon IndyCar Series team, but a season-ending injury last month at Indianapolis Motor Speedway has delayed their run at glory together until 2018.

Bourdais had already won the season-opener at St. Petersburg and was fastest in practice for the Indianapolis 500 when a violent crash during time trials sidelined him with multiple fractures in his hip and pelvic region.

He was halfway through a four-lap run that would have likely landed him on the pole for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. They probably had a pretty good chance at winning the race, too.

That was the goal when Coyne hired Bourdais in the offseason. The four-time Champ Car World Series champion also brought with him engineers Craig Hampson and Olivier Boisson.

Bourdais and Hampson won 31 times in Champ Car with Newman-Haas Racing, while Boisson was the lead engineer for KV Racing when Bourdais won four times at the Chevrolet outfit over a three-year stretch.

By all accounts, this was a super team intended to chase championships and the Borg-Warner Trophy. Coyne told Autoweek that Bourdais’ injury has only strengthened their resolve to come back stronger next season.

"I was with him on Tuesday, and we talked a lot about next year," Coyne said on Sunday at Road America in Wisconsin. "He's even hoping to come back sooner. But he's really invested in what we're doing right now without him, and we're talking about things we can do better next year."

Bourdais has targeted the season-ending race at Sonoma Raceway on Sept. 17 for his return. Coyne has hired ex-Formula 1 racer Esteban Gutiérrez to drive the No. 18 for the rest of the season. Coyne says he will run three cars once Bourdais is ready to return.

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