INTERVIEW: IndyCar’s Conor Daly chases Daytona 500

Conor Daly has been a mainstay in open-wheel racing for over a decade, but stock cars have also piqued his interest in recent times as he made starts in all three NASCAR national divisions over the past five years. Next week, he hopes his dabbling will culminate in getting to run the biggest NASCAR race of the year as he attempts to qualify for the Daytona 500.

On Friday, The Checkered Flag spoke with Daly on his Daytona preparations, his 2023 plans in both the NASCAR Cup Series and NTT IndyCar Series, and adapting to life in another discipline.

Daytona 500 qualifying will take place on Wednesday, 15 February, followed by the Duels the next day to set the starting grid. The race is on Sunday, 19 February.

Daytona Dreaming

Daly will enter the Daytona 500 in the #50 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 for The Money Team Racing, with whom he made his Cup Series début at the Charlotte Roval in 2022. The initial deal to enter the Cup Series arose via his IndyCar sponsor BitNile Holdings and its CEO Milton “Todd” Ault III.

“At the end of the IndyCar season last year, Todd Ault from BitNile.com, he asked me if I wanted to race NASCAR, and I was like, ‘I mean, yeah, obviously, of course,'” Daly recalled. “I didn’t really know if that was legit or not. Turns out it was. We were racing at the Roval not too long afterwards. The team I guess liked having me there. Tony (Eury Jr., crew chief) and I worked really well together. They saw a lot in the race that I guess that they liked and so they expressed some interest to have me back.”

Although Daly had already built a rapport with The Money Team, fellow IndyCar driver Hélio Castroneves was initially in talks with them to enter the Daytona 500 in what would have been his first foray into NASCAR. When negotiations with Castroneves fell through in late January, TMT turned to Daly and formally announced his entry on Tuesday, exactly a week before qualifying.

While on relatively short notice, Daly was more than happy to sign on, especially as the deal came with six more starts during the 2023 season.

“[The] opportunity to do Daytona was kind of thrown in with a few of the other races that we have planned as well, so we weren’t originally going to do it until a few weeks ago,” he explained. “They had the car. It was ready to go. The upside was very good and the downside was really, we already know we’re the underdog so if something happens, we don’t make it, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still going to try to do other races. That was kind of the decision making and very, very thankful for it. It’s an incredible event to be a part of and as a huge race fan ever since birth, to be able to have said, hopefully, that I’ve done the Daytona 500 and the Indy 500 is really, really cool.”

Daly faces an uphill battle just to even make the race. Forty-two cars are currently on the entry list vying for forty spots, with the final four being reserved for teams without a charter like TMTR. Although the #50 made the 2022 Daytona 500 with Kaz Grala, it was via a last-lap pass in his Duel race rather than qualifying speed. The team had also struggled during their sporadic starts that year, with Grala’s best finish in three tries being a twenty-third at Charlotte while Daly placed thirty-fourth at the Roval.

To make matters more challenging, practice will not take place prior to qualifying on Tuesday, effectively meaning Daly’s first time on track will be when he is preparing for his flying lap. Although he is no stranger to larger, draft-reliant ovals in IndyCar like Indianapolis Motor Speedway, he finds it “tough to say” on whether his experience there can translate to Daytona. He previously competed at Daytona in IMSA as part of the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, though it came on the infield road course.

“I think in general, the patience that I’ve tried to work on in IndyCar and the aero platform of the IndyCar is obviously a little bit more powerful. But from what I hear in this new Cup car, the aero side is a little bit more powerful as well, so it’s something that I’m excited to experience,” opined Daly. “It will be hard because no practice, that sucks. Going into it, just a qualifying lap, is going to be a real challenge because you know you don’t want to lose the draft. Losing the draft right out the gate would be a real challenge. I hope to at least stay in it for a little bit to experience what that feels like. But there’s so much that can happen really quickly in that race and it can easily go from a decent day to a really awful one, so you just want to make sure you stay in it.

“When you’re coming to the last lap of that Duel, you either have the person that you need to beat behind you, or they’re right there and you can take advantage of the situation with the draft and someone hopefully pushing you to help you.”

He will have to compete for the last slots on the grid against the likes of seven-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson, action sports star Travis Pastrana, reigning Craftsman Truck Series champion Zane Smith and third-placed Chandler Smith, and 2022 Xfinity Series Daytona winner Austin Hill. All but Pastrana and Chandler Smith have made at least one Cup start, but the former finished tenth at Daytona in the 2013 Xfinity season opener and won the pole at fellow superspeedway Talladega Superspeedway later that year while Smith led the most laps in the 2021 Truck Daytona event.

Despite the odds, Daly is not disconcerted: “I think people know that I have zero experience doing this. There will always be contributing factors. I think whether we make it or not, I’m going to gain a lot of experience. I’m going to gain sixty-two-plus laps of experience that I didn’t have in the past, right? In case we want to come back hopefully for next year.

“I’m sure several people will see it several different ways, but from what I’ve been told by other drivers, it’s like, ‘Look, this is going to be monumentally difficult. You’re going up against 23XI (Pastrana), Jimmie Johnson with his team, Kaulig (Chandler Smith), Front Row Motorsports (Zane Smith), RCR (Hill), like teams that all have cars in that race anyway.’ And we’re showing up with just our one car. It’s great to be a part of the Chevrolet family. I think they’ve told me that Chevrolets are strong, which is nice.

“But you know what? I don’t care about pressure as much anymore. I already know that I put enough pressure on myself because I want to do well. I don’t want to be off. I don’t want to lose the draft. I don’t want to be bad. I want to be successful. So I already put enough pressure on myself to be good at this.”

Although they will be jockeying for qualifying spots against each other, Daly is particularly hopeful of getting to race alongside Johnson and Pastrana. Daly and Johnson competed in IndyCar together in 2021 and 2022 before the latter elected to return to NASCAR. Pastrana is a close friend who formerly ran full-time in the Xfinity Series; in 2020, he and Daly were team-mates in the Truck Series at Las Vegas, where Daly beat him by three positions.

“All of them are good drivers, but obviously I know Jimmie really well,” Daly continued. “I know Travis really well. I know Travis is going to have a tough challenge as well because he hasn’t done much, well, any Cup racing at all, and it’s been many, many years since he’s been in an Xfinity car. I know he’s going to have the Truck race to do, which is gaining him some experience, which is great. He’s been racing down in Florida all week long. So he’s got his body and mind ready, which I’m a little bit jealous of, but I’m pretty confident Jimmie’s going to make it on speed, depending on how that goes.

“The perfect scenario is all three of us make it because I love racing against Jimmie, I love racing against Travis, and they’re probably the best friends that I have in that field right now because I’ve seen them more often.”

Adjusting to NASCAR

While NASCAR and IndyCar share plenty of crossover in fanbases, tracks, and driver relationships, the dichotomy between the two disciplines is not a mystery. Although Daly is approaching Daytona much like he would at Indy by testing in the simulator and studying past races, the homework he has in NASCAR is vastly different from what he is used to.

“I was just at the simulator yesterday at Chevrolet’s facility in Charlotte and the Chevy IndyCar simulator’s right next door to the Chevy NASCAR simulator,” Daly remarked. “Did a full day in the IndyCar simulator and then jumped in the NASCAR simulator right next door. Trying to prepare as much as possible.

“There’s way less data acquisition that you can look at. For an IndyCar race, we have a ton of data we can look at. We can look at everything. But there’s not as much on the NASCAR side, certainly with my team because they don’t have that, so our team doesn’t have that type of data collection or anything of that nature. There’s not much I can do other than study onboard videos, look at how the races have gone in the past, and even races before last year almost aren’t really as relevant because the car is so different now. So studying all of last year’s stuff, there’s a Denny Hamlin onboard from the Duel that was really good to watch. There was basically just onboard cameras from the 500 last year that I’ve been watching.

“So yeah, it’s hard to prepare for a NASCAR race because there’s just not as much information as I would say you get on the IndyCar side, but still, you got to do everything you can do.”

Even with not much footage to research, he has plenty of friends to lean on. Some like twice-reigning Xfinity Series regular season champion A.J. Allmendinger also come from open-wheel backgrounds, with Allmendinger previously having won five times in Champ Car and raced against Daly in post-merger IndyCar.

“The guys who have been most helpful for me are friends of mine that I’ve known a long time,” Daly said. “A.J. Allmendinger and I were rookies at the Indy 500 together in 2013 so I’ve known him, I’ve been a fan of his before I even knew him, but I talked to him all the time. He was the first one that I called when this Daytona opportunity came about. He’s the first one I called when we were talking about the Roval. We spent thirty minutes on the phone talking about the Roval and shift points and what to expect.

“Chase Briscoe as well. I talk to Chase Briscoe every day, so Chase Briscoe has been super helpful. He’s been a guy that I’ve used as a resource. Other than that, a lot of people have been helpful. I talked to Austin Cindric a lot at a Colts game not too long ago, and that was good to chat with him a little bit. Denny Hamlin is of course in the Dirty Mo Media podcast gang with me now as well, and so I’ve chatted with him a little bit.

“People have been for the most part helpful and that’s cool. Noah Gragson is a really good friend. He stayed at my house a bunch, so I’ll try to ask him some questions; even though he’s a rookie, he has done this event before. Everyone’s been pretty cool. Corey LaJoie has been a guy as well that I enjoy communicating with. I like his whole career and what he’s done. I think he’s a very talented driver in maybe not the highest level of equipment that he might be able to use to the best of his abilities, so he’s done a great job and we’ll just see what happens.”

Double Duty

Once Daytona is out of the way, Daly will focus on IndyCar where he will run another full season for Ed Carpenter Racing after finishing seventeenth in the 2022 standings. It is the first time in his career that Daly will race full-time for the same team in consecutive seasons (he also drove for ECR in 2020 and 2021, though the schedules were split with Carlin), which he credits to BitNile.com—set to launch on 1 March, four days before the IndyCar season opener in St. Petersburg—becoming his primary backer in 2022. He described the BitNile sponsorship as “the only reason I’m here. It was very life changing. From end of 2021 until now, didn’t know if I would have anything. And then now, we have everything, which is awesome.

“We really, really want to improve on the IndyCar side. At Ed Carpenter Racing, I think there’s an equal passion for improving both Rinus (VeeKay) and I where we think we really struggled last year from a car standpoint, but we also know that we had a great car at the Indy 500 the last two years, a chance to win certainly in 2021 and a great chance again last year to at least be in the top three. I don’t know if we had the winning car, but we for sure could have finished in the top three. But everything has to be perfect there so that’s a great place to be.

“There’s a couple of places this year that we will be going back to finally for the second time on the IndyCar side, which are places that I love. Iowa last year, we qualified third and in St. Louis, we had a great race going until we had some mechanical failures.

“There’s a lot of places where I can’t wait to get back to with this team and we are so young in our experience level at certain places. There’s a lot of interesting stuff this year, a lot of repaves for tracks. Detroit’s new, there’s all kinds of stuff that will be different.”

With nearly a month between the first two IndyCar rounds in St. Petersburg and Texas Motor Speedway (2 April), he plans to make his second Cup start of the year at Circuit of the Americas on 26 March as part of a “Texas Two-Step” with the Texas race. The only other confirmed NASCAR date on Daly’s calendar so far is also tied to IndyCar as he intends to run Indianapolis on 13 August, which is a collaborative weekend between the two series with IndyCar racing the day prior.

“I love COTA and I think the fact that there’s no stages at the road courses too makes for some interesting strategy plays,” he stated. “I know Tony Eury Jr.’s looking forward to that.”

The NASCAR/IndyCar double at Indianapolis, which takes place on the road course and organised since 2021, has only been performed once by Cody Ware that first year. While running multiple races across different disciplines in a given weekend is not a new phenomenon, racing a top-level open-wheel car obviously has different demands and challenges from a premier series stock car.

“It will be tough, but I love that stuff,” said Daly. “I feel like I know so much about the IndyCar that I’m very comfortable to just jump in that and go, and the NASCAR Cup car, probably be a little bit different. I’ve done this for so many years now, which is weird to say, but you have the ability to switch certain things on and off in your mind. Even the seating position itself is so different in the Cup car compared to the IndyCar that it’s almost a different driving style immediately just by sitting in it. It’ll be tough for sure, but I will get the most track time of anyone that weekend. I don’t necessarily see that being a negative.

“That weekend in particular, I am super excited about, because I love racing in Indianapolis. It’s my hometown, getting to race in front of my family and friends there is super meaningful. It’ll be tough on my body, I know that, but just to finish the race there and have a decent day would mean a lot to me and a lot to our sponsor too. I can’t wait for the chance and to be the only one doing it, that’s pretty unique in itself.”

Drivers who race in both NASCAR and IndyCar tend to be linked by fans to another, more popular form of “Double Duty” in which they run the Indianapolis 500 and Coca-Cola 600 on the same day, with 2021 Cup champion Kyle Larson set to attempt it in 2024. However, Daly ruled out the possibility of doing so himself until he wins the 500.

“I would never want to take away any focus from Indy because that really does mean the most to me,” he commented. “I had a lot of people asking but yeah, right now, it’s not worth it for me to do. You need to have more credentials like Kurt Busch or Kyle Larson or even Kyle Busch if he ever decides to do it. I’d have to have more credentials. Tony Stewart, you know the guys like that who have done it, John Andretti, Robby Gordon, those are very historic names that are very successful, so I’d need to win the 500 first before I even consider it.”

Other NASCAR starts for 2023 have yet to be etched in stone, but Daly and TMT has a “watchlist of races to do” provided there is no clash with IndyCar. He singled out Watkins Glen International as a track he “would love to do because I love Watkins Glen”, and its 20 August Cup date is on an IndyCar bye week. Daly also added “we’ve kind of looked at Talladega”, whose two Cup races on 23 April and 1 October respectively take place on an off-week and nearly a month after the IndyCar season is over.

“There’s a potential for a few,” Daly noted. “It all depends on a lot of how the IndyCar stuff is going as well and what we can afford to do timing-wise. We’ll see what happens but I’m just glad that we get it going next week and get the body and back into race mode.”

Interview on YouTube