Born in nearby Noblesville, Ind., Conor Daly is no stranger to Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
The NTT IndyCar Series veteran has made 11 starts in the Indianapolis 500, with three consecutive top 10s and a finish of sixth in 2022.
Daly — who has 110 IndyCar starts to his name — has also acquired a sizeable stock car resume in recent years. He made his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut at Road America in 2018 and has made a total of 10 starts in NASCAR’s top three series.
This season is set to be Daly’s busiest NASCAR schedule yet, with three Craftsman Truck Series races currently scheduled with Niece Motorsports. His itinerary also got a surprise extension earlier this month, as he had the opportunity to compete on the Indianapolis oval for the first time with Sam Hunt Racing’s Xfinity program.
“The opportunity [with SHR] was kind of random,” Daly told Frontstretch. “We had this program with Polkadot — our partner here — where we were going to do a couple of Truck races, and we had some budget that was kind of leftover. My manager Andrew was speaking to Sam [Hunt] and just like, ‘What’s possible?’ And when he said Indy, we were like, ‘Well, it’s kind of hard to not want to go after that one.’
“We were able to kind of put this program together, pretty quickly actually. … I was in Charlotte a couple of weeks ago for another seat fit in the sports car that I was driving this week and went over to Sam’s shop and just started talking, [and] sure enough, we did the deal. Pretty cool to be able to get to do it, especially [at Indy]. I love it here. I was excited to see that Xfinity and Cup were coming back to the oval.”
Daly immediately impressed in Friday’s (July 19) practice session, as he posted the third fastest time and qualified 16th the next day. But while he had plenty of experience with open wheel cars on the oval to assist, the stock cars were a whole new ballgame. For starters, the average speeds of the Xfinity cars in practice and qualifying were approximately 70 mph slower than the ones seen in Indy 500 qualifying earlier this year.
“[The stock car] is just a different art form,” Daly said. “… It’s obviously much less downforce, much less power, because there’s not a ton of banking here, right? And every corner is different; it’s a bit of a different battle per corner. It’s kind of a fun challenge,…
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