Meyer Shank Racing’s Conor Daly in the No.60 AutoNation Honda did great in Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sportscar Course. Team owner Mike Shank drafted in the Noblesville native on Sunday morning to fill in for Simon Pagenaud who was not cleared to race today following his 83G crash on Saturday.
Not only did Daly make up seven places in the race but he also came home ahead of his teammate Helio Castroneves to finish the race in 20th.
“It’s just a different car, at the beginning of the race I just had to get used to it. It took me about 30, 40 laps to really understand how to attack in this car, and I like it, but when you lose one stint in these races it’s hard to get it back. Once we got help up by Pederson, we were on the back foot, and that’s my fault. But the car was amazing, once we got in clear air and got ahead of some of those cars it was fantastic. At the end to be able to close in on the two cars in from of me by seconds at a time felt really good. I very much enjoy being out there. I felt like could drive how I wanted to drive. The team did an amazing job getting me up to speed with only one practice, so I can’t thank them, Mike Shank and Jim Meyer enough for giving me this opportunity.”
Helio Castroneves was full of praise for Conor Daly saying:
“At the end of the day it wasn’t the result that we wanted – we finished 20th and 21st. Conor (Daly) did an amazing job recovering from 27th and big props to him for jumping in the car and doing what he did. I made some decisions that were not right for the set up that we had and it just destroyed our race. It’s a shame because we deserve better. We’re going to get it, you just can’t give up.”