Conor Daly subs in for injured Jack Harvey for Sunday's Iowa race: 'It's agony in the car'

NEWTON, Iowa – Before the green flag to start Saturday’s IndyCar race at Iowa Speedway, Jack Harvey elected to give up eight spots on the starting grid on his own. It took an untold amount of sheer grit for the series veteran to be in the cockpit at all.

With he and his Dale Coyne Racing team’s hand forced by what continues to be a head-scratching restrictive line in the IndyCar rulebook, Harvey managed to start Saturday’s 250-lap race despite continuing to deal with debilitating back and neck soreness that all a sudden surfaced when he woke up last Saturday in the midst of Mid-Ohio race weekend. Despite near round-the-clock care from IndyCar’s medical team since, the pain had only gotten worse, to the point the 31-year-old Brit could be seen walking around the paddock Saturday afternoon stiff as a board.

And when he dropped out of Saturday’s race 28 laps in, having executed the only realistic goal set for him that evening — start the race to ensure the No. 18 Honda entry would receive full points by virtue of taking the green flag — Harvey had to be gingerly helped from the cockpit.

“I’m a very lucky person to get to do this for a job, but it’s agony in the car. I can’t really describe it at this point. I probably did more laps than I thought we might, and I’m a competitive person, as is everyone who does this, but it splits your spirit to the core when you can’t do it,” Harvey said after throwing in the towel for Saturday’s race. “I have a lot of respect for Dale (Coyne) and everyone at Dale Coyne Racing, and I really wanted to do my part, and that today was to start the race.

“I hope people have enough respect for me that when I say ‘it hurts’, it isn’t just a little bit of pain. But I’ve tried pushing through this for two weekends in the car.”

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In his place for the back-half of this weekend’s doubleheader that starts Sunday at 12:30 p.m., IndyCar journeyman Conor Daly, who was summoned by the team Friday night after Harvey’s pain continued through the day’s 90-minute practice, will undergo a special 15-minute session at 9:05 a.m. in order to gain clearance from series officials that the former Iowa Speedway polesitter and 10-year veteran of the sport didn’t have 15 hours prior.

Harvey also told IndyStar on Saturday he doesn’t plan to run Toronto next weekend, giving him more than a month to recover before IndyCar’s next race weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway Aug. 16-17.

Daly flew into Iowa on Saturday on Roger Penske’s private jet in order to be on-hand for a potential substitution role for DCR, and two hours before the scheduled green flag, Coyne had told Joey Barnes of Motorsport.com the team, in consultation with Harvey, had made the decision Daly would take the incumbent driver’s place after Harvey continued to deal with “agony” in the cockpit during his qualifying runs — of which he made three, due to IndyCar’s myriad hybrid system issues that befell several teams Saturday afternoon.

Daly had strapped on a spare DCR fire suit and had hopped in the cockpit of the No. 18 to familiarize himself in the car before Coyne summoned both drivers to the team transporter for an update. Due to IndyCar rule 4.3.3.1, which came into play in May when Arrow McLaren wasn’t permitted to formally name Tony Kanaan the potential replacement for Kyle Larson in the event Rick Hendrick decided the NASCAR Cup series driver needed to abandon his maiden Indy 500 run for his day job, DCR was similarly barred by IndyCar from running Daly Saturday.

Because he had not participated in the weekend’s lone practice, he was not ‘cleared’ to participate in either qualifying or the race without participating in a special 15-minute session the rulebook requires for a last-minute driver swap if a team should move to someone who hasn’t already been on-track that race weekend. And with the teardown for Luke Combs’ pre-race concert stationed in the infield not scheduled to be completed until 55 minutes before the green flag, IndyCar told Coyne there was not enough time to hold the session.

Had the team been willing to make the decision sooner — either before Friday’s practice even began, or at least soon enough Friday to be able to get Daly at the track before the 1:15 p.m. start of the Indy NXT race Saturday afternoon — the swap might’ve been able to be made. But there was hope, even after Harvey struggled through Friday’s late-afternoon practice, another night of sleep and a morning of work from the IndyCar medical team would get him to a level of pain he could bear. In wanting to let Harvey test his back and neck out once more during qualifying at a track where G-force loads on the drivers have only increased since the offseason partial repave, the team unknowingly eliminated its fallback option.

With it clear Harvey would be the only option to start Saturday’s race, rather than pulling the car from the grid entirely and accepting half-points for last-place’s 5-point award, the team in already in an uphill battle to gain a Leaders Circle spot for 2025 (and the more than $1 million it pays) relied on Harvey to make the call. Though one might argue Daly, who ran nearly a full-season campaign a year ago and who registered another top-10 finish in the Indy 500 less than two months ago, was better equipped to be on the grid — even without having turned a single lap on the repaved track with a slightly altered car package — than Harvey operating as a shell of himself, the team was left to follow the rules, and Harvey obliged to make the start.

During the pace laps, Harvey made a point to drop to the rear of the grid, so as to be out of the fray, and he picked up four spots from there when David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, Agustin Canapino and Christian Lundgaard failed to make it to Turn 3 before a sizable crash on the backstretch. Harvey told IndyStar it was then he decided to keep running through the caution period, but shortly after the restart on Lap 20, he realized the pain was too deep and restrictive to sensibly and safely continue.

“You want to say you’re fine, but the reality is, it’s agony in the car. I have a lot of sympathy for people who struggle with neck and back issues, because you just wake up in the morning in pain and it puts me in a bad mood for the day,” Harvey told IndyStar. “IndyCar medical has been (expletive) amazing, so fantastic. I have so much respect, appreciation and admiration for what they do and the level they’ve looked after me and taken care of me.

“The whole time I’ve been at the track today, I’ve been with them getting prepped and ready. They’re doing as much as they can before they have to declare me unable to drive. I had made some improvements throughout the week, but it’s always there, and it’s worse on an oval — particularly with this extra repave because of the loading. It’s just so intense right now. It’s a struggle.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Jack Harvey withdraws from IndyCar Iowa Race 2, Conor Daly subs in