Harding Racing adds two senior staff members

Harding Racing has appointed Vince Kremer and Gerald Tyler to new senior management positions starting this weekend at Barber.

Kremer, a veteran team member who worked most recently for the Verizon IndyCar Series as its vice president of operations, will step in and manage the Mike Harding-owned outfit. Working under team president Brian Barnhart, Kremer will run the team while team manager Larry Curry, who missed the most recent race at Long Beach, seeks relief from a back injury that has worsened. Once Curry is able to resume his duties, he and Kremer will split management duties.

Harding Racing has also signed respected race engineer Gerald Tyler as its technical director. Tyler, who brings decades of Indy car experience to the team, will work directly with race engineer Matt Curry as the two look after the No. 88 Chevy driven by Gabby Chaves.

"Larry's been dealing with a lot of pain and couldn't make it to Long Beach, and we want him to get better so he can come back as soon as possible," Barnhart told RACER. "And Vince had reached out to us around the same time on wanting to do something different than he was, which was fortuitous for us, so that worked out quite nicely.

"And I was eventually wanting to do something with our managerial structure that emulated what they do at Chip Ganassi Racing with [team managers] Barry Wanser and Scott Harner working under [managing director] Mike Hull, so having Vince come right in to manage while Larry's out is perfect and having the two of them working under me to manage the program together is what we'll eventually have."

With Tyler, Harding gains a technical director whose travels have taken him from large CART teams to smaller IndyCar outfits and back.

"We've brought Gerald on to add depth to our engineering department which, from Day 1, was thin," Barnhart added. "We've only had [Larry's son] Matt Curry. We didn't have a shock guy or a simulation guy; we had Matt, who was a one-man band as our race engineer and everything in between. And he was asking for help so we looked at who was available outside of IndyCar, because Mike [Harding] doesn't want to poach people working for other teams, so Gerald was the top guy who fit our needs.

"It's difficult to find quality help, and pairing Gerald with Matt is a big jump in talent. He's very pragmatic, driven on common sense, and key on communication working within the team. He said 'we're going to keep it simple and focus on the fundamentals,' which is perfect for us."