JUNCOS HOLLINGER RACING
There’s been a rumor in motion for a few months about Ricardo Juncos trying to sell a stake in the team he co-owns with Brad Hollinger.
“I heard the same thing, but it’s just rumors, people trying to do some damage,” Juncos said. “There is some interest, of course; there is a lot of people interested in IndyCar and trying to do something, but that does not mean we are the one looking to do it. Nothing is from me as well, and I don’t think Brad is, because we are on the same page. So we looking for sponsors, that’s for sure, but not to sell anything.”
The team’s sponsorship plight, which dates back to 2023, is the biggest influence on where the team could be headed. Agustin Canapino was looking like he’d be done after his rookie season due to the lack of funding to continue in the No. 78 Chevy. Hollinger was gracious enough to support a continuation with the Argentinian — who Juncos dreamed of bringing to IndyCar — but the situation with securing real sponsors to pay for the No. 78 has not improved.
And with the No. 78 enduring a rough June and July where a series of bad results has the car sitting outside the cutoff line to earn a $1 million Leaders Circle contract for 2025, there’s an even greater reason to worry about Canapino’s future in IndyCar. Conor Daly stepped in to test in Canapino’s place at World Wide Technology Raceway on Thursday, and the team declined to comment on the reason why.
The team has an option on Romain Grosjean with the No. 77, and he is Hollinger’s driver in the same way Canapino is Juncos’s driver. The No. 77’s sidepods have been just as bare as the No. 78’s, but as the team’s bank, it would be a surprise to see Hollinger’s driver yanked in favor of someone next season. And, money aside, the Swiss-born Frenchman and the team’s exceedingly good engineering group have found a solid groove to maintain.
Grosjean’s run with four top-10 finishes in the last six races is the team’s best string of results since it arrived in IndyCar, so assuming Hollinger is good to keep Grosjean going in the No. 77, there’s more to offer from its team leader in Year 2.
The No. 78 is the obvious entry to ponder in the near-term. Not missing out on that $1 million Leaders Circle is critical. After that, a windfall of external money would also do wonders for the situation, but since that didn’t happen last season, or this year, taking a paying driver could be inevitable as the team looks to the future.
Former Andretti Global driver Devlin DeFrancesco, whose businessman father Andy DeFrancesco used his companies and business-to-business deals to fund his son’s time with Andretti on the Road to Indy and IndyCar, has been working behind the scenes for the better part of a year to establish a team of his own to run Devlin.
With the engine supply issues in mind where Chevy and Honda aren’t interested in supporting single-car efforts and also have nothing left to offer, the conversation turned a while ago to searching for co-entry options among the existing teams. And while Juncos Hollinger Racing isn’t the only team to hold talks with DeFrancesco, JHR is the primary team I continue to hear mentioned as where a DeFrancesco-led investment would fall.
The possibility of Grosjean and DeFrancesco, former teammates at Andretti, being reunited at JHR, with a new wave of sponsorship through a possible co-entry arrangement with the No. 78, is definitely on my radar. They’ve been talking, but whether that talk turns into signatures on a contract and wiring of funds is to be determined. Again, if ever there was a time for millions of dollars to magically appear in the team’s bank account, it’s now.
If it doesn’t, JHR should not have a hard time inking one of the numerous IndyCar, Indy NXT, or Formula 2 drivers with solid budgets who are searching for a way into the series.
MEYER SHANK RACING
Is Meyer Shank Racing heading for an expansion to three cars? That’s another lingering rumor.
“Anybody who’s saying that is wrong. We’re not running a third car,” Mike Shank told RACER. “The 66 seat’s wide open. We’re very happy with David [Malukas] and would like him to stay, but he’s got to decide what he wants to do.”
Shank and Jim Meyer have Felix Rosenqvist returning to the No. 60 Honda, and nobody attached to what should be the most sought-after seat on the market with the No. 66, which Malukas is only signed to drive through September.
Since Malukas returned from his hand injury and has blown everybody away, his stock has shot through the roof. He’s known to have received at least one competing offer to drive somewhere else, and it’s said to be for a healthy sum. Is that PREMA or RLL? Both would make sense.
It means any thoughts of an automatic continuation with FRO-MAL at MSR in 2025 have been forgotten since others also want the young American. But the landscape is expected to change at MSR with the anticipated switch in technical service providers, and that should alter how Malukas approaches free agency.
About a year ago, MSR was rumored to be looking at two directions to take with its ongoing technical partnership with Andretti Technologies, which supplies race engineers, dampers, setup data, simulation data and onboard data to the team.
Following 2024, MSR was said to be considering a shift at the end of its contract with Andretti where it would hire and develop its own in-house engineering group, thereby breaking the long-held reliance on using external engineering support. The other supposed direction was to continue working within a technical alliance, and to see what options existed to go forward. MSR used Arrow McLaren (under its former Schmidt Peterson Motorsports banner) before shifting to Andretti, so the idea of making inquiries to other teams in the paddock regarding technical partnerships was by no means new.
Andretti’s rise in competitiveness this season has been reflected in the complementary rise by MSR, which would have made signing an extension a worthwhile proposition, but then the charter system made its presence felt at the one Honda-powered team that’s better than Andretti.
Facing a need to cut one or more cars from its lineup, and with that impetus to keep as many of its team members on the payroll as possible after the downsizing, a newfound willingness by Ganassi to take on a technical alliance was found. Would it have been possible for an alliance to happen if Ganassi was staying at five cars? Doubtful.
So that’s where Malukas, in a MSR+Andretti relationship today, would be wise to consider how a MSR+Ganassi car, with engineering debriefs alongside Dixon and Palou — and access to all of their data — would be something to embrace.