Conor Daly has driven for Ricardo Juncos’ team before. But not like this. Daly’s car has also had wrenches turned on it by many of these same mechanics. But not in this organization.
What should be unfamiliar, instead, was familiar all along, including Daly’s bad luck.
Saturday’s (Aug. 17) Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at World Wide Technology Raceway was another opportunity for Daly to race for yet another NTT IndyCar Series team. Juncos Hollinger Racing is the 11th different team that he’s raced for since his first IndyCar race back in 2013.
Unfamiliar organization.
Team co-owner Juncos was Daly’s car owner for the 2010 Star Mazda (now USF Pro 2000) championship which he dominated, giving Juncos his first auto racing championship.
Familiar owner.
When Trevor Carlin’s eponymously-named organization left IndyCar after the 2021 season, Juncos and new team co-owner Brad Hollinger absorbed many elements of the team, including several mechanics.
Unfamiliar organization.
Daly drove for Carlin on all the oval races in 2021 except for the Indianapolis 500 as the team’s main driver Max Chilton did not want to race on ovals except at Indianapolis.
So for Daly, his new ride at JHR was built by crew members he had worked with.
Familiar Personnel
Following some engine change penalties, Daly started ninth in the 260-lap race. However, Daly’s familiar cloud of bad luck visited the Noblesville native as he followed Rinus VeeKay through turn 2 early in the race.
“The 21 car just flat out lost it in front of me,” Daly said of VeeKay while on pit road. “And then I got, I mean, I don’t know what he was doing. The whole race, he looked like he was crashing. And then right in front of everyone that is lined up beneath him, basically half spins twice and then I got wrecked from behind. So it’s a real shame that happened. But honestly [from] then on, we were just, I mean the floor was damaged, the wing was damaged and everything. So we just basically drove around for a while and we were definitely still fast, but I mean we had no downforce and a really difficult situation.”
When VeeKay slid exiting turn 2, Daly hit the brakes. Behind him were Kyle Kirkwood and Romain Grosjean. Kirkwood slowed when he saw Daly brake but Grosjean couldn’t see VeeKay slide at the front of the line and had nowhere to go. Grosjean hit Kirkwood who then hit Daly, spinning the No. 78 Chevrolet around on the backstretch.
Daly spoke later to Frontstretch‘s Wyatt Watson and gave more perspective on the incident.
“I guess if you want you can call it a racing incident, it’s fine,” Daly said. “It’s just such a shame that we happened to be the one that got hit the most, and Kyle. It’s no one’s fault, I mean it’s just frustrating that it happened the way it was and it happened to be the 21 car. I like Rinus a lot, but the poor guy’s fighting that thing and it’s rough.”
The floor on Daly’s car and the rear sway bar adjuster both had significant damage, limiting the car’s performance for the rest of the race. But in the process of making repairs to Daly’s car, the team lost a lap on pit road while the mechanics were going through the car fixing and replacing what was broken or bent.
Daly only got back onto the lead lap for a 3-lap period from lap 69 to 71, but the rest of the race had Daly always at least 1 lap down to the race leaders.
“We can never give up,” Daly said. “So obviously we just have to stay out there, we have to try to create something magical and then obviously the magic wasn’t happening. But this race was crazy, obviously. Because you see a lot of different people that were in the top 10 that probably shouldn’t have been there but that’s what it is. This is IndyCar racing sometimes and we were sadly a little bit unlucky.”
After the various mechanical failures and accidents that plagued the rest of the field, Daly kept it all together to finish 2 laps down in 13th place.
While that would be a disappointment for many and Daly’s frustrations were evident to all who saw him after the race, there is a silver lining in that Saturday’s result was the second-best result that the No. 78 entry had all season long.
“We knew we were fast, so that’s all that matters,” Daly said. “You know, we were fast and we proved it to people. So we just want to keep working on that and do better as we go. It’ll be a lot of new experiences for me, but hopefully we can just bring it every weekend.”
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.