Juncos Hollinger says it's status quo on Daly

Conor Daly’s seat at Juncos Hollinger Racing is not under immediate threat after a $3.5 million shortfall in sponsorship recently came to light.

According to JHR team principal Dave O’Neill, Daly’s appointment to the No. 78 Chevy was not contingent upon the delivery of the sizable amount sought from crypto-industry company Polkadot.

“He will indeed be in the car,” O’Neill told RACER. “It's amazing how it all blows up. Conor is bringing some funding and has brought some of it in, and we weren't relying on the Polkadot money to come in. He asked for an amount which was all over the news, $3.5 million. And actually, the $3.5m is the incorrect figure because the first request put in was 3.5 which got rejected, and then the 2.5 is the latest one which they voted against, but there’s another proposal going together for the Indy 500. So anything that comes from that will be gladly appreciated into JHR, because we'll put it in to get put it towards running the car and the business.

“But Conor also has probably five or six other strong sponsors in the works and out of the five or six, two or three he's landed already. And we have funding for that, so his drive wasn't based upon any one company. We didn't sign him because he had X amount of dollars. We signed him because I believe he's a very good driver and it also happened that he thought he could bring some funding with him. So that's the truth to it all.”

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A clause does exist that allows JHR to place another funded driver in the No. 78 if it’s needed to satisfy the operating budget requirements, but O’Neill says team owners Ricardo Juncos and Brad Hollinger are not in a hurry to explore that option.

“We don't currently have any plans to do that,” he said. “We want him in the car for the season. I'm really looking forward to not only having Conor on the ovals, but the street tracks and road courses, because he's good at those as well.”