IndyCar teams pitch in to help JHR after transporter fire

The IndyCar community came together this week in support of the Juncos Hollinger Racing team after the transporter carrying Sting Ray Robb’s No. 77 Chevy and most of its support equipment caught fire while on the drive from Iowa Speedway to JHR’s shop in Speedway, Ind.

With back-to-back races on the schedule and the need to repair Robb’s heavily damaged car from his crash on Sunday, the workload was extreme before the fire took place. According to team principal Dave O’Neill, life has been a blur over the last 72 hours to get race cars prepared and sent to unload today in Toronto ahead of Friday’s opening practice session, and JHR wasn’t lacking in outreaches to overcome the fire-related hurdles.

“We had offers from all around, and all the bigger teams with Andretti, McLaren, Ganassi, to name a few,” O’Neill told RACER. “We elected to borrow a trailer offered by Andretti, but it didn't measure up to fit our equipment, so we’ve ended up using a smaller Indy NXT trailer we had to put it all in. But we had all the offers, which was brilliant from everyone. (IndyCar president) Doug Boles rang me up, asked whether he needed to arrange a team managers' meeting to see if there was any way we could get equipment or car parts or radios or anything together we needed, which was an absolutely brilliant idea. But luckily, we didn't need to borrow anything major.”

O’Neill had the dedicated crew for Conor Daly’s No. 76 JHR Chevy and Robb’s No. 77 crew combine to accelerate preparations for Toronto with one car before turning the entire building’s attention to recovering from the fire.

“The crew stayed until midnight every night, and they’re flying to Toronto this morning,” he said. “The trucks left yesterday, one in the morning and one late. So just to rewind, the trailer burned down, then we had three trailers from our shop drive through the night back down to the burnt trailer. We unloaded the burnt trailer and put the car in a 20-foot trailer, and then had that driven to the factory so we could get the work started on it straight away. And then the other trucks that were down there, smaller trailers, we unloaded all the burned and smoke-damaged stuff into them and brought them back.

“Then the 77 crew helped the 76 crew turn Conor [Daly]’s car around. So Conor's car was done in a day. And then when the damaged car, because Sting Ray crashed in Iowa, got here, we had to clean all the smoke damage off that and the crashed parts, clean it up, and get it ready. And then the 76 crew and the 77 crew worked to build Sting Ray’s car for Toronto. Then we dragged the burnt trailer back to Indy with nothing in it, just so we had it back at base to assess the damage.

“And then the rest of the factory – so office staff, truckies, engineers, everyone – worked until midnight every night, cleaning and washing all this stuff with Dawn. Getting all the crew clothing out that was in there and smoked, and taking it down the launderette and cleaning out, because all the fire suits were in there and all the radios…they needed cleaning because they had smoke damage. Luckily it wasn't the awning truck that burnt, but all the awning poles were in the 77 truck, so they got warped from the fire. So we've had to get new awning poles made. It was a Herculean effort by the team with almost no time.

“We definitely felt supported from the from our community, with people ringing up and asking if there was anything they could do or help with. But it was basically cleaning everything, throwing away stuff that was burnt, writing a list to buy new stuff and two days to do it in.”

It’s Toronto this weekend, a long trip to California the weekend after for Laguna Seca, and then a brief moment to breathe until the Aug. 8-10 race in Portland.

“Hopefully everyone got a decent night's sleep last night,” O’Neill said. “And once we get past the Laguna stretch, I can give them all well-deserved days off for their effort.”