MADISON, Ill.– When Conor Daly qualified ninth for Saturday (Aug. 17) evening’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway, he did so for the 11th different IndyCar team he has competed for throughout his career.
The difference with this team is that it brings Daly’s career back to the beginning of his racing journey. Juncos Hollinger Racing replaced Agustin Canapino with the Noblesville, Indiana, native who drove for Juncos back in the days of the old Star Mazda championship in 2010.
Daly didn’t just drive in that championship, he dominated with seven wins out of 13 races, only finishing off the podium once with a fourth-place finish at New Jersey Motorsports Park.
After their last race together at Road Atlanta, 14 years ago, Daly is back with Juncos and their partnership is off to a great start. The No. 78 Chevrolet was 12th in the first Friday practice session, qualified 12th before engine change penalties, and was then seventh in the evening practice that same day.
Daly has integrated well with the team, partially because there are a lot of familiar faces turning the wrenches on his car. Daly ran part-time for Carlin Racing on the ovals several years ago and team co-owner Trevor Carlin bowed out of NTT IndyCar Series racing ahead of the 2022 season. The majority of the mechanics went from Carlin to JHR.
“The main thing I think that I really respect out of them is that they know where they should be looking for the missing time,” Daly said. “So a lot of teams, well, some teams that I’ve been with either haven’t looked in the right place or they’re just on a bit of a different page.
“What I like is that they’re identifying where I think over the winter they want to develop. It’s hard to do it now and again, it costs money to do. So it’s hard to do that. But I definitely think that to have two cars in the top 10 and we’re up against these guys with a lot more budget and a lot bigger groups, I would have to say it’s quite impressive.”
The weekend got off to a great start for Daly, but he knows that the main focus is Saturday afternoon. There are 260 laps ahead around the 1.25-mile oval near St. Louis where Daly has one top-five finish back in 2017 for A. J. Foyt Racing.
“I probably can’t be at 110%, you know what I mean,” Daly said. “I probably have to be just a little bit tamed because they really need the points.”
The No. 78 entry is 25th in points, five points behind the No. 41 A. J. Foyt Racing Chevrolet. The 24th position is the supposed cutoff for the Leader Circle program where the top 22 full-time teams in entrant points get about a million dollars from the series as a reward for performing well.
The discrepancy in numbers comes from the three-cars-per-team cap that is part of the Leader Circle program. The bottom two entries from Chip Ganassi Racing are not eligible for the program, dropping the cutoff from 22nd to 24th in points.
The No. 78 entry has suffered from inconsistency early in 2024 with Canapino not providing enough results in the top 20 to keep the entry above the cut line. Juncos had to make a change behind the wheel despite having one his home country’s most decorated racers come over to a new form of racing.
“We take the big challenge, for me it was a big challenge, a huge risk for [Canapino] as well,” Juncos said. “So I’m always going to be so thankful for that. Coming from no open wheel, everybody knows, most difficult series on the planet like IndyCar, no open wheel experience. We take it, we’re gambling, we try our best and I think we did really good things at some moments, right?
“So I can say nothing, we always need to remember where he came from, how difficult it was, the language, the country, the cities and nothing else we can ask him for. Unfortunately, we had to make some decisions for the best of everybody and we need to move on. The door is open, I think our relationship is really good. I know Argentinian fans are not happy, I get it. I understand. I feel for them. I was the one gambling more than anybody and the one [who] wants a different outcome, but this is life, it is what it is. We’ve got to make decisions in life that sometime it’s not the the one you would like to have, but it is what it is. So I don’t regret, to be honest, to do what I did with him. Like I said, he’s the best in Argentina and I was going to be thankful for what he took the gambling, took the risk and I don’t regret it.”
Juncos was adamant that if his team were able to run a third car at Indianapolis, his first phone call would be to Canapino.
There is one more interesting logistical hurdle that was crossed on Friday morning. Daly raced at Iowa Speedway in a mostly black fire suit for Dale Coyne Racing as a substitute for Jack Harvey. The team wanted Daly in a JHR firesuit for the final five races of the season and Sparco and Impact Racing teamed up to make that happen.
Sparco makes all of their driver suits in Turin, Italy, but Impact Racing has all of the same machines at their facilities less than five miles from Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Since Sparco owns Impact, they were able to send the digital files of the suit over to Indianapolis and expedited the suit-making process in the days leading up to the race. A process that normally takes several weeks instead took several days.
In fact, Daly’s suit didn’t make it over to WWTR until about 10:30 a.m. on Friday. Just 15 minutes after arriving at the track, Daly wore the suit for a photoshoot and at 11:45 the opening practice of the weekend began.
All of that to get one of IndyCar’s most popular drivers ready to race at one of his favorite tracks.
Christopher DeHarde has covered IndyCar racing and the Road to Indy for various outlets since 2014. In addition to open wheel racing, DeHarde has also covered IMSA and various short track racing events around Indiana. Originally from New Orleans, DeHarde moved to the Indianapolis area in 2017 to further pursue a career as a motorsports writer.