Conor Daly hopes to wind up Carlin opportunity at Gateway on high note

Conor Daly is determined to deliver an excellent result tonight in his final start for Carlin Racing.

The 27-year-old Noblesville, Indiana native joined the team for the remaining oval rounds in June after the team's regular driver Max Chilton bowed out. Daly notched two eleventh place finishes at Texas and Pocono along with a 12th at Iowa.

He hopes to do one better in tonight's Bommarito Automotive Group 500 at the World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

"I mean it would be really special obviously," he said. "I mean this is, you know, this is the last oval of the season. I love this track. Love this crowd, love the Midwest. This team's been awesome having me around and working with me. It still feels very young in our relationship."

His Carlin opportunity is sandwiched between two outings for Andretti Autosport. He piloted a fifth entry for the team in the 103rd Running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge. The partnership resulted in Daly turning his best 500 performance and finished in tenth after running inside the top five much of the day.

The result garnered him another shot with Andretti in the season-ending Firestone Grand Prix of Monterey at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

His final start for Carlin will come at a track that has been good to him in the bast.

Daly powered to fifth after starting 11th in his lone start at the 1.25-mile oval located just outside of St. Louis, Missouri while driving for AJ Foyt Racing.

He returns to Gateway this weekend while having to learn the Universal Aero Kit at the track for the first time.

Two practice sessions proved to be enough and left him unphased at the end of the day. He noticed the biggest change on his No. 59 Gallagher Chevrolet came by way of a softer Firestone tyre compound.

"It certainly seems like the tires are wearing a little bit more than when I was here in '17," he said. "So it's definitely a different situation but that's cool. I think that's, that's good to have a little bit more tire wear people moving around a little bit."

"Hopefully it helps us in the long run. If we can keep our tires under arrest just a little bit more than other people, um, because it's a long night, but uh, it's, it's track position is going to be super important."

A patch of oil-dry relegated him to 18th on the grid, but he showed no reluctance in final practice by pacing the session with an average speed of 181.931 mph. The slip up didn't curtail his attitude and felt upbeat to end the night on top.

"Qualifying on ovals is tough sometimes cause you sort of know where you're going to be. But this time I thought we really had a shot at qualifying in the top half and that would be really helpful. But you know all I said is that we've got to focus on our race car and what we're doing tonight and we did - we were fastest."