This was the second race the 26 year-old American drove the Harding Racing #88. He previously gave the team their best finish at the Honda Indy Toronto temporary street course circuit on July 15th.
“I think we had a reasonable pace all race long,” said Conor Daly. “We put in a little too much wing on the first stop, so the second stint was really tough because the car was really loose. After that we started making up some good ground on track and the car was pretty quick. The Chilton machine really messed with us when he was already a couple laps down. I’m sort of unsure as to why that was acceptable, but it is what it is. It’s a shame what happened by running out of fuel, but these things happen. Racing is a wild sport. The guys did really good in the pits, the pit stops were great, and the #88 Chevy was great. Now we just move on.”
“Well it’s a really disappointing finish to what was a fairly progressive weekend for us,” said Brian Barnhart. “With good qualifying and a decent run in the race. We had a great pitstops but got held up with Chilton and the lapped traffic that cost us several seconds. We’ll have to get to the bottom of it to see what happened, but for some reason we didn’t get a full fill on the last pit stop. We weren’t aware of it and didn’t know about it until it was too late, and we couldn’t finish the race. It’s a shame, the guys did a great job all weekend and we’ll just regroup, recover and head off to the next one.”
The Harding Racing team will be testing at Portland International Raceway this Friday during a break in the 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series schedule. Competition will resume at Pocono International Raceway on Sunday, August 19th. NBC Sports will broadcast the race starting at 2:30 p.m. ET.
About Harding Racing
Indianapolis based Harding Racing made its Verizon INDYCAR Series debut at the 2017 Indianapolis 500. The team is led by Mike Harding owner and president of Harding Group, a concrete and asphalt paving company based in Indianapolis. Brian Barnhart is team president of Harding Racing and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser Jr. serves the team as executive consultant. In addition to their ninth-place finish in the 2017 Indianapolis 500, the team competed at Texas Motor Speedway and Pocono Raceway, finishing fifth and fifteenth respectively. The team currently competes full-time in the Verizon IndyCar Series.
About Conor Daly
Conor Daly is a second-generation race car driver. He started racing go-karts as a 10 year-old where he won 19 races and two championships. Since then, he has competed in Europe in the GP3 and GP2 Formula One support series, the IndyLights Series, the Weathertech SportsCar Championship and the Verizon IndyCar Series. Recently, he competed in the 102nd Indianapolis 500 where he finished in 21st position.
