Daly Called Up to Relief Drive for Harvey in Second Iowa Race

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

NEWTON, Iowa – Dale Coyne Racing is calling in the reliever for the second race of the Hy-Vee IndyCar Weekend at Iowa Speedway.

With Jack Harvey in extreme pain that has persisted since last weekend at Mid-Ohio, Conor Daly will take up driving duties for the No. 18 Honda for Sunday’s Hy-Vee One Step 250 on the 0.894-mile oval.

Coming into the weekend, the outlook for Harvey to drive at all was murky, but he was able to push through the pain to at least practice and qualify the car.

“You want to say I’m fine, but the reality is, I’m in f****** agony in the car,” Harvey said after his qualifying run on Saturday afternoon.

“It’s painful. There’s no two ways around it. I wish I could give you guys a better answer or more optimistic answer. I have a lot of sympathy for people who struggle with neck and back issues because waking up in pain just kind of puts me in a bad mood for the day.

“I don’t know, man. There’s so much pain in the car that we need to have a conversation with the team about can you do 250 laps consecutively? It’s a doubleheader, so this has come at a terrible time. I have a lot of respect for everybody at Dale Coyne Racing. Everybody on the 18 crew, so if I can’t give it 110, then out of respect for them, I’d rather someone else be able to and jump in.”

Leading into Saturday night’s race, the team was looking to get Daly into the car, but he was denied by NTT IndyCar Series officials, forcing Harvey to have to drive, despite the pain.

Harvey was only able to complete 28 laps, running well off the pace before it just became too much to bear and he made his way down pit road, gingerly climbing from his machine and retiring from the race.

“In truth, we pretty much made the decision that we were hoping that Conor was going to be able to drive. I have a lot of respect for IndyCar, but they didn’t clear him to drive today without doing any practice sessions or qualifying or anything like that, so that forced our hand a little bit,” Harvey said afterwards.

“It basically meant that we were going to have to start the race to try and get some Leader Circle points. I mean, I would say I’m a very lucky person to be able to get to do this for a job, but it’s agony in the car. I can’t really describe that pain, so we actually did more laps than I thought we might.

“I’m a competitive person, everybody who does this is, so it kind of splits your spirit to the core knowing that you can’t do it. But everybody on the IndyCar Medical side have been fantastic. It was their recommendation not to do it. I have a lot of respect for Dale and everybody at Dale Coyne Racing, so I still wanted to do my part. That today was really just start the race.

“On the safety car, under caution laps, it hurts. I hope people have enough respect for me that when I say it hurts, it isn’t ‘Oh, it’s just a little bit of pain.’ Like, I’ve tried pushing through this for two weekends now and just can’t.”

In the hours after the first race of the Iowa doubleheader, Dale Coyne Racing submitted a waiver to have Daly drive on Sunday, which was granted pending a 15-minute refresher session on Sunday morning.

Daly completed the session without issue and will climb back into the cockpit for the 250-lap race, scheduled to go green at 12:30 pm ET. Per IndyCar rule, he will have to start shotgun on the field in 27th place.

This will be his second IndyCar start of the season following a top-10 finish in the Indianapolis 500. He has nine previous starts at Iowa, the latest coming in the 2023 doubleheader, with a best finish of eighth in the 2020 race, where he also won the pole.