INDIANAPOLIS — Hometown hero Conor Daly may have had his best shot at winning the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday, May 25.
Ultimately, the Indiana native had a problem that cost him track position en route to a 10th-place finish.
But that result is far from how high the Juncos Hollinger Racing driver could have finished.
“I don’t know if something broke,” Daly said. “We got to definitely look into it, but the car was just evil the last two sets of tires. I have no idea what happened. We didn’t even make really many changes, so it just completely fell off a cliff, and I was hanging on for dear life, like literally crashing every turn.”
The stats will show that Daly started 11th and finished 10th, but his race was so much more eventful than that. The 33-year-old methodically worked his way up through the field, gaining spots on restarts and pit stops, until he reached the runner-up position by lap 110. But the lone car Daly trailed for the next 11 laps was Devlin DeFrancesco, who was on an alternate strategy and eventually needed to pit.
Daly gained the lead on lap 120 and led for the next 13 circuits. Through the next round of pit stops, Daly cycled to second, behind Ryan Hunter-Reay. But Hunter-Reay ultimately ran out of gas and stalled out on pit road. By that point, Daly had already begun to drop like a rock.
“So just kind of a shame,” Daly said. “I mean, something maybe could have gone wrong, but I mean, the team did great. The car was so fast at the beginning, and it’s exactly what I needed. And then something happened, so we [have] got to look into it.”
Sunday’s race continues a string of tough luck Daly has had when going for the Borg-Warner Trophy.
“Last year, I had a damper explode essentially,” Daly said. “So we just got to look into it. Because this car was so good, and then all of a sudden, it fell off a lot.
“Still proud of what our efforts, and the team did such a great job with the pit stops. But yeah, just weren’t quite there.”
Daly had been ahead of eventual 2025 Indy 500 winner Alex Palou for a majority of the race prior to his issues.
“It’s just sad, because, like, I know we were with Palou really the whole time and we pitted with him and we were in the right spot,” Daly said. “So we were doing everything we needed to do. Maybe our fuel number was a bit aggressive. We have to look into why our fuel number maybe was a bit too aggressive.”
The result does mark Daly’s fourth consecutive top 10 in the Indy 500 and fifth overall. It’s his first top 10 in the NTT IndyCar Series since the season finale at Nashville Superspeedway last year.
But a win by one of Indiana’s own would have extremely popular among the 300,000 people in attendance. It also would’ve capped off a week of greatness in Indiana sports, with the Indiana Pacers — Daly’s favorite NBA team — going up 2-0 over the New York Knicks in the conference finals. IndyCar could’ve ridden the wave by showing off Daly as the Indy 500 champion at one of the Pacers’ home games of the series.
Instead, Daly and his fans have to wait another year.
“Yeah, it really sucks,” Daly said. “I thought this was the year, and it was feeling like it. Just something happened, and we [have] got to figure out why.”
Michael Massie joined Frontstretch in 2017 and has served as the Content Director since 2020.
Massie, a Richmond, Va., native, has covered NASCAR, IndyCar, SRX and the CARS Tour. Outside of motorsports, the Virginia Tech grad and Green Bay Packers minority owner can be seen cheering on his beloved Hokies and Packers.