Conor Daly was drafted in to drive the No. 78 Juncos Hollinger Racing into a $1 million Leaders Circle contract before the end of the season. The Hoosier accomplished the first part of that mission by moving the car from 23rd—tied for 22nd on points, but 23rd due to the car’s lower placements—entering the Hy-Vee Milwaukee doubleheaders to 20th as a result of delivering the team’s first NTT IndyCar Series podium.
Daly’s stellar blast from 25th to third was exactly the kind of short oval performance he’s known for, and while there are two races left to run, he has the No. 78 on the right side of the top 22, which will produce that $1 million contract if he can maintain the car’s form at the second Milwaukee race and the season finale at Nashville Superspeedway.
“It’s really cool, especially when the last podium I was on had Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais. I changed my era of IndyCar drivers,” Daly said sitting alongside race winner Pato O’Ward and second-place Will Power.
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“Kind of crazy. I honestly didn’t know how good we were. The first lap I decided to just go where there was open space. Turns out that worked. Then we just kept going. It was kind of slowly working our way forward.”
Daly conjured up his typical bravery to shoot past multiple cars on the start and restarts, often by going wide—wider than any other driver dared—and he was rewarded every time. His recent reunion with the team where he won his first major open-wheel championship has been warm, and inside the JHR team, he’s also found many of the talented crew who were part of the former Carlin Racing team he drove for and was absorbed into JHR when Trevor and Stephanie Carlin folded the operation at the end of 2021.
“A lot of those guys, I got ’em a pole, now I got ’em a podium,” he said. “I feel good about that. They’re a great group of people. Shoutout to Trevor Carlin, too. He put together a really cool group of people. Obviously, a lot of them have really enjoyed it. They’ve stayed. Ricardo (Juncos) and Brad (Hollinger) have taken over.
“It truly is, I think, a very underrated group. They’re so smart. There’s a lot of talented folks there. They deserve this, for sure, because it’s been a very unlucky year for them. Obviously I felt it the last two weeks. This is the first race we’ve been together where we haven’t been spun at least once. That’s positive. I think tomorrow can only be better, I hope.”