Conor Daly scores best IndyCar finish in 5 years in GMR Grand Prix at IMS

INDIANAPOLIS -- Noblesville native Conor Daly survived the chaos, carnage and rain to finish 5th, marking his best NTT IndyCar Series finish since the race at Gateway in 2017 where he finished 5th.

Daly, running his first full IndyCar season with the same team in back-to-back years since 2017, qualified an impressive 4th after making it into the Fast 6. Daly's pace was much better than teammate Rinus VeeKay's after VeeKay managed only a 15th place starting position.

Even with good qualifying and race pace, Daly's GMR Grand Prix was anything but easy.

"I think that was my first rain race since 2015," said Daly in the post-race news conference. Not only was it Daly's first rain race in seven years, but it was also the first official wet race for the aeroscreen. It created a new challenge during the already tricky wet conditions.

"I've never seen anything like that before," said Daly in regards to racing in the rain with the aeroscreen. "It was like the water just stayed in the center of the screen."

More: 'The hardest race I've ever done': How Colton Herta won a wild, rain-soaked GMR Grand Prix

More: A full list of the crashes and chaos from IndyCar's GMR Grand Prix at IMS

Daly noted that he expected the water to move away from the center of the screen as he went faster, but explained that it was not happening that way. He expressed his trust in the series to continue to improve upon the aeroscreen technology.

While the wet conditions and the aeroscreen already proved difficult, Daly was also struggling with tires. There was a period during the race where Daly's No. 20 Chevrolet suddenly lost pace and several positions as a result. He was running 5th on lap 13 but by the end of lap 14, Daly had slipped to 16th. A timely yellow for Josef Newgarden's stalled car in the Snake Pit Complex helped save what could have been a disaster for the team's strategy.

"It felt like we had a left rear that was going flat," Daly said while explaining what caused his loss of pace. The team had put on a pair of used red tires prior to the loss of pace. On a drying track, a "scuffed" set and a fresh set of slick tires don't typically have a major difference with grip levels.

"Sometimes when you put on used reds I don't know whether you pick up something on them or something else," said Daly. "It might just be luck of the draw. As soon as we put on another set of tires, everything was perfect."

A series of cautions helped Daly stay in contention for the race win even as the chaos caused by the rain continued.

Daly's 5th place finish is his highest finish of the season and it moves him from 19th to 15th in points. It is his second race this season where he has finished ahead of VeeKay. VeeKay had an accident on lap 21, relegating him to a 23rd place finish, his worst of the season.

"I never give up in this series," Daly lamented. "I tell the team I will always be fighting to the end."

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Conor Daly finishes 5th in GMR Grand Prix, best since 2017