With the Indianapolis 500 seat that Conor Daly took from 29th to 10th a year ago going to fellow IndyCar veteran Jack Harvey, Daly said Wednesday on his podcast ‘Speed Street’ that he was fighting for his life as a pilot in the weeks to come.
He has long been rumored to be one of the favorites for the open seat at Juncos Hollinger Racing alongside Sting Ray Robb – one of three full-time seats remaining in the IndyCar Silly season for 2025 – Daly indicated in this week’s episode that an opportunity is not yet assured. . Daly described the last two months of searching for sponsors as “one of the hardest offseasons I’ve ever been through, and I’ve been through a lot.”
“Last year I pretty much knew all I was going to get was the 500 (with Dreyer and Reinbold Racing). This one I literally feel like I’m either in it or so dead,” Daly continued. “I won’t have any form of income and I have no idea what’s going on, and it’s just frustrating.”
There was a time, a few months ago, when Daly’s goal was to race full-time elsewhere. Its initial proposal to fund Polkadot, the blockchain technology run by its community of “Dot holders,” for 2025 called for a budget of $7.5 million, according to the proposal summary seen by IndyStar. The seven-figure sum reportedly went toward primary sponsorship of a full 33-race Xfinity Series campaign ($4.3 million) – with Sam Hunt Racing – as well as a one-time 500 return to Dreyer and Reinbold Racing ($1.5). million), with whom he raced alongside Ryan Hunter-Reay a year ago in May.
After landing a $2.1 million budget from Polkadot last spring for the 500 NASCAR and additional races with 95.8% approval from the Polkadot community – a program that came from a direct message sent to Daly out of
Daly’s latest proposal with Polkadot asks the community to approve a $3 million budget for next season that would cover his participation in six IndyCar races, including the 500, St. Pete, Thermal, Road America and the doubleheader from Iowa. The hope is that funding for the remaining 11 IndyCar races would come from other sources and combine for a full IndyCar schedule for Daly.
The results of the proposal won’t be known for another month, leaving Daly hoping for either better results in the vote and potential team owners willing to wait, or the goodwill of Ricardo Juncos and Brad Hollinger to sign him for the budget which he has already obtained, with the hope that more will soon be on the way – and the desire to fill the void if not.
From May: What is Polkadot and why is it sponsoring Conor Daly’s Indy 500 car? We explain
Incumbent Romain Grosjean has tried to stay in the mix to reclaim his place by attempting to secure major sponsors and partners from JHR that they have been missing since the team’s return to IndyCar in 2021.
Other drivers on the free agent market include Rinus VeeKay, Daly’s former teammate at Ed Carpenter Racing, Linus Lundqvist, Katherine Legge, Hunter McElrea, Toby Sowery, Pietro and Enzo Fittipaldi and Jacob Abel.
The strain of the job and the unknowns of it all have been more than Daly’s usual drudgery.
“My job is to be a racing driver, and I can’t concentrate on that job at the moment. There are people who are employed to sell sponsorships, and no one is capable of it, and it seems that the pilot be the one everyone depends on,” he said. “The last few weeks and months have been excruciatingly boring, so much so that I should be happy to be working on something like this.
“But I can’t sleep. It’s just that my whole existence is under the control of others. It’s not under my control, and all I can do is give people a reason to stand behind me and say, “Hey, here we go. go compete. We did it in a month last year, and we’d like to have a whole season to compete (this year). »
IndyCar Silly Season: Devlin DeFrancesco completes RLL’s IndyCar lineup for full 2025 season
Despite initially only entering IndyCar once a year ago, Daly managed to cobble together six more races, starting with a one-race sub for the injured Harvey in of the Iowa doubleheader. During the Summer Olympics hiatus, JHR parted ways with its second-year full-time driver, Agustin Canapino, after a series of poor results and off-track tensions. With the team at risk of losing its spot in the Leaders Circle, which would pay just over $1 million to the top 22 eligible entrants for the 2025 season, JHR gave up the seat to Daly in hopes that the driver, whose best recent results have been obtained. oval races, could salvage a comeback effort.
Daly’s 3rd place finish in Race 1 of the doubleheader at the Milwaukee Mile, JHR’s first IndyCar podium, saved a spot in the top 22 and proved to be perhaps THE underdog story of the season. But with team co-owner Brad Hollinger no longer wanting to significantly make up the team’s budget deficits, an extensive search for sponsors – and drivers tied to big budgets – took place this offseason.
Robb, who was expected to hold the biggest sponsorship package on the free agent market, assuaged some of those concerns with his signing last month, but with full-season budgets increasing rapidly since the introduction of hybrid technology , more will undoubtedly be needed. to get the team to be reasonably competitive as ownership continues to strengthen its engineering and management groups.
Indy 500: Ryan Hunter-Reay returns to Dreyer and Reinbold for 500, teaming with Jack Harvey
Daly admitted on the podcast that in other years he might have simply welcomed a return to the status quo and stayed with 500 solid machines at DRR, but the lure of the potential for a bigger IndyCar opportunity, less than two years removed from the full-time journey he was kicked out of by ECR in mid-2023, is something he doesn’t want to give up on just yet.
“I basically put all my eggs in one basket, and either everything will be fine or a complete disaster and everything will be destroyed,” he said. “And then I won’t have any racing to do next year.
“The budgets have increased so much in IndyCar, and I have no idea how these teams are going to survive at any given time. I really don’t know.”
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Conor Daly eyes full-season IndyCar deal with Juncos Hollinger Racing