Insight: Harding Racing's journey to IndyCar

There's the old line about waiting for a bus: You stand there for 45 minutes, and then three of them turn up at once.

It's kind of the same with new IndyCar teams. Up to this point, the number of full-time teams to have joined the series during the DW12 era stands at one: Ed Carpenter Racing. During the same period, the series has lost Dreyer & Reinbold, KV, Panther, Dragon, HVM, and Sarah Fisher Hartman, although DRR continues on as an Indy-only program, and part of SFHR was absorbed into Carpenter's team.

And yet if you look up and down pitlane at the Speedway this week, you can count as many as four teams with a car in the 500 and aspirations of creating something more permanent.

Some are closer than others. The Laziers have spoken in the past about their ambitions to one day run full-time, although that day might still lay some way off on the horizon. (If you were the speculating kind, you could look at third-generation racer Finn Lazier's appearance in USF2000 this year and do some math).

And Harding Racing? From the outside, that one seemed to come out of left field. Owner Mike Harding's Harding Group has a long-standing association with Indianapolis Motor Speedway as a supplier of paving services, and hosts 4,000 guests – including all of its employees – in its own suite at the 500 every year. But the transition from that into car entrant came about through one of its employees: long-time Indy team manager Larry Curry.

"Running a car has been a dream of mine, but the opportunity came about because of Larry," Harding (pictured) told RACER. "He and I talked about it this winter, and it just became a reality."

Of course, race teams don't "just become reality," and Curry himself traces the first seeds of the team back to last year's 500, when he was involved in running Buddy Lazier's car.

"I went up to the [Harding] suite after the race, and [Mike] said something about doing the 500," Curry recalls.

"He said, 'what do you think about us doing it?' And I said, 'Mike, do you want us to do a team?' He said yes, and the first thing I told him was that it is a big expense. And he said, 'I never asked you that. I asked if you'd do it with me'. So I said, 'Sure'."

Curry moved fast. Two months later, at the Brickyard 400, he set up a meeting with Chevrolet's Racing Director Mark Kent that resulted in access to Chevy engines. With that box ticked, it was time to track down a car.

"Our first plan was to buy one new car and then maybe find a good used one," Curry says. "And Mike said, 'no, I want you to get two new ones.' We took delivery of the first car on January the 10th, and took delivery of the second car on February the 10th."

One big advantage to Harding's relatively long lead time compared to fellow fledgling IndyCar team Juncos, which pulled its deal together in just a few months, is that it was able to get a head-start in assembling its crew.

"I was already interviewing people back in November to come and work with us in January," Curry says. "I've got five really good full-time guys."

A sixth "really good full-time guy" was announced in early April, when the team confirmed that it had signed Gabby Chaves as its pilot. The last big piece of the puzzle was in place, and the team immediately headed to the open test at Texas Motor Speedway on April 12. Those miles were valuable in providing the team an opportunity to shake down one of its new Dallaras while ironing out a few of the operational kinks that pop up with any new team – but they created an unexpected complication when the Harding crew prepared for its first day of Indy practice last Monday.

"The first day was a bit of a challenge," Curry admits. "We ran one new car in Texas, so the plan when we came here was to run the other new car first, do a few laps, make sure all the systems work, and then change the engine. That's when we thought we'd start running at noon.

"Then IndyCar said, 'No, Gabby can't do the refresher because you guys tested at Texas.' So immediately I lost two hours. What I should have done, looking back on it, was say, 'OK guys, forget the engine change until tonight, we're going to stick with this car today, and then we'll go to the other car starting on Tuesday.'

"Well, we didn't. We tried to run it in, then we tried to do an engine change, and as we got the car back to the pit the gun went off and the day was over, so we never got a run in it. We started running it on Tuesday, and immediate the car came to life. By the end of the day we were almost up at 224, so we were very pleased and the guys did a great job."

Curry (pictured) prides himself on the depth of IndyCar knowledge among his crew. Between himself, his son Matt, who is the engineer, and the mechanics, he estimates that they share more than 100 years of combined experience in running cars at Indy.

"And every one of these guys have either been on teams that won here, teams that sat on the pole here, teams that won championships in IndyCar," he says. "These guys are used to winning."

"To do a two-car deal, I've always had the philosophy that the first thing you have to do is be a really good one-car team," Curry says. "So let's start there, and then see where we can take it."