Race Weekend Central

Cole Pearn Joins Ed Carpenter Racing as Conor Daly’s Lead Engineer for Indy 500

Former NASCAR Cup Series crew chief Cole Pearn will be Conor Daly’s lead engineer for the No. 47 of Ed Carpenter Racing in the 2020 Indianapolis 500, the team announced Wednesday, July 29.

Pearn was an engineer for both Richard Childress Racing and Furniture Row Racing before becoming a crew chief for Martin Truex Jr. Pearn led the No. 78 FRR team to take the 2017 Cup championship and compete in four out of five championship races. He announced his retirement from NASCAR after the 2019 season.

“I am super excited to get a chance to compete in the Indy 500 with Conor Daly and Ed Carpenter Racing,” Pearn said in a team release. “I wasn’t sure when I would want to get back to racing, but this is a great opportunity to do so. To be able to do it at a high level was too hard to pass up. Obviously, it will be a steep learning curve but getting to work with [No. 20 engineer] Pete Craik again and the rest of the ECR team is about the best situation I could hope for!”

Though Daly is competing full time in 2020, the Indy 500 will be both Pearn’s and Daly’s first experience with ECR.

“I am really excited to get to work with Cole for the first time at the Indy 500,” Daly said. “We’re both going to have to get up to speed with this ECR operation, but I can’t wait. Cole has had an incredible amount of success in the NASCAR world and now we’ll be going for our first Indy 500 win together!”

Daly has two top 10s and earned the first pole of his career at Iowa Speedway.

The Indianapolis 500 is set to run on Aug. 23 at 2:30 p.m. ET and will air on NBC.

About the author

Joy joined Frontstretch in 2019 as a NASCAR DraftKings writer, expanding to news and iRacing coverage in 2020. She's currently an assistant editor and involved with photos, social media and news editing. A California native, Joy was raised as a motorsports fan and started watching NASCAR extensively in 2001. She earned her B.A. degree in Liberal Studies at California State University Bakersfield in 2010.

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