LEBANON, Tenn. — While uncertainly looms on the horizon for Conor Daly as the calendar turns to 2025, the Noblesville, Ind. native finished the 2024 IndyCar Series season with a 10th-place finish in Sunday’s Music City Grand Prix at Nashville Superspeedway.
After starting sixth, Daly stayed in the top 10 during the first stint of the race before making his first pit stop on lap 44 out of 206.
Daly’s early stop proved to be his race’s undoing as Felix Rosenqvist had what looked like a right-front tire puncture. That put the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda into the turn 2 wall.
The No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet was trapped off the lead lap.
“We got killed with the first yellow, that put us two laps down, so really hard to come back from that,” Daly said. “But we did, and that’s because the car was good, the team’s good. We put ourselves back on the lead lap, which was nice, but yeah, just had to save a crazy amount of fuel to the end.”
Daly had to save a lot of fuel because his team tried out a three-stop strategy. After pitting on lap 143, fuel saving was the buzzword while most other drivers made a fourth stop late in the race and elected to run hard.
After running on the outside of the top 10 late in the race, Daly inherited 10th place when Rinus VeeKay pitted from that same position on lap 201.
“It was difficult, I hadn’t done a race like that in a long time,” Daly said of fuel saving. “But yeah, just thankful to be in the top 10. It’s a great day when we’re in the top 10. Feels like we’ve been really competitive every weekend so that’s really, really satisfying.”
Daly’s efforts toward the end of the season helped lift the No. 78 entry further inside IndyCar’s Leader Circle purse-sharing program for the top 22 eligible full-time entrants. The No. 78 ended the season 20th of all eligible entrants (no team is allowed more than three entrants in the program) after being below the cut line earlier this season.
The third-place finish at Milwaukee did most of the heavy lifting for Daly, but as always, funding is the biggest problem facing most racing drivers in the top levels of motorsport.
“I need it to happen really fast, and I just don’t know what support I can come up with,” Daly said. “It’s only money, that’s all it is and I hope the results do something. It feels like I left everything out there, and I tried to do the best job I could in the short amount of time that I had.
“I trust Ricardo (Juncos) and Brad (Hollinger, team co-owners), and we’ll just see what happens. I would love to be here, though; this is an amazing place to drive, an amazing community to be a part of, this team, and just thankful to have had the chance to be out here competing.”
The best finish for the No. 78 entry before Daly took over was 12th place on the streets of Detroit. After Daly took over the ride, his three best finishes were third, 10th and 13th.
About the author
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.
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