Juncos Hollinger Racing have given the IndyCar community notice that it doesn’t take a large armada of resources and personnel to be competitive in modern open wheel racing.
The team finished eighth with driver Callum Ilott behind the wheel of their No. 77 Chevrolet in Saturday’s (May 14) GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, but the reality is that the team and driver have made steady progress through the first part of the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season.
Running the final three races of the 2021 IndyCar season allowed Ilott and JHR the opportunity to get their feet wet before committing to a full 2022 IndyCar campaign. Both Ilott and the team knew that there would be many challenges along the way but they both believed in each other. A 24th place finish at Long Beach in April overshadowed the fact that the JHR team were ninth in the first practice session and 10th in the morning warmup session before the race. Progress was slow, but evident.
The next race at Barber Motorsports Park allowed the team to put the rest of the field on notice with eighth and ninth in both opening practice sessions, 11th in qualifying and quickest in the final practice session.
Ilott ran as high as seventh place before spinning the car and stalling in the first half of the race, bringing out a full course yellow. The 2020 Formula 2 runner-up finished 25th after losing two laps. Putting a full race weekend together became the next goal as the driver and team began to bond.
“I think we’ve all kind of bonded and understood what I need as a driver and what the engineers need to succeed,” Ilott told Frontstretch. “And obviously it’s still a long, slow process. But you know, when it works and I’m able to get that [seventh place] in qualifying and I’m able to get in the Fast 12 at Barber, I’m able to show my talent, I’m able to show what the car can do and what I’m capable of with the car. But, you know, at the end of the day, there’s a…
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