WEST ALLIS, Wisc. – Back when Conor Daly last stood on an IndyCar podium, he was flanked by a pair of series champions in Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais and jokes now that his 24-year-old self was still “trying to be elite.”

Eight years later, he’s just trying to be an IndyCar driver at all, and yet, Daly’s display of grit and guts that set a season-record with 51 on-track passes across 250 laps in his first visit to The Milwaukee Mile was the perfect encapsulation of why the 32-year-old Noblesville native hasn’t yet given up on the sport.

And it hasn’t given up on him.

“I’m thankful to be here and be back up where I dreamed of being my whole life, really,” Daly said after his 3rd-place finish in Race 1 of the doubleheader weekend. It was not only his first podium since Race 1 of the 2016 Detroit doubleheader but the first for Juncos Hollinger Racing, the team that hired him just weeks ago to finish the final five races of the year to tackle its $1 million mission and somehow nab a 2025 Leaders Circle spot. “I feel like I have a lot that I still want to do in this world. The last couple years have been obviously really difficult for me in the situation I was in (at Ed Carpenter Racing).

“But this group around me has been so supportive. I know I can run at the front with these guys, and the car gave me the opportunity to do that tonight.”

IndyCar points picture: Series championship points standings after Milwaukee Race 1

Eight years ago, Daly had logged three top-6 finishes through the first eight races of his first full-season IndyCar campaign with Dale Coyne Racing, but over the next five years his racing career lacked stability, as he bounced from another full-season ride with AJ Foyt Racing (2017), two seasons where he hopped around to make 11 total starts (2018-19) and two more where he split his time between Ed Carpenter Racing and Carlin, but never firmly had his feet planted anywhere. It wasn’t until a last-minute meeting during a leisure trip to Las Vegas that Daly secured reliable funding to land a full-season ride with ECR in a single seat as part of a multi-year deal.

And within 18 months, that home had imploded, as internal tensions and lackluster results eroded his foundation and left him dipping his toes into the NASCAR Trucks and Xfinity series, as well as the Nitrocross Championship, all just in 2023. By the time winter arrives, Daly will have driven for seven teams in six different championships. In IndyCar alone, he’s raced for 10 active teams during his career, all but Team Penske and Chip Ganassi Racing. His resilience, though it generates plenty of flack on social media as young hopeful stars on the outskirts of the sport struggle to maintain rides, has earned him the respect of virtually all of the paddock – displayed no better than the point 4th-place Santino Ferrucci made to seek out Daly and congratulate the JHR driver after he executed a pass on his bitter rival that sealed his podium finish with under 30 laps to go.

“I think it’s really impressive what we’ve done with this group. It’s still a fairly fresh team from the last five, six years. I love what they’ve done. I love this group of people they’ve brought together,” said Daly, who pointed out that large swaths of JHR employees migrated over from Carlin when the latter sold off its IndyCar assets to JHR and left the sport. At that time, Daly had been an oval-only driver for Carlin and delivered that team its first IndyCar pole in 2020. “I think this is a very underrated group. They’re so smart. There’s a lot of talented folks here, and they deserve this for sure, because it’s been a very unlucky year for them.

“Obviously, I’ve felt it the last two weeks. This is the first race we’ve been together where I haven’t been spun at least once, which is positive. I think tomorrow can only be better, I hope.”

Conor Daly World Tour: 7 days, 3 races, 4 cars, 4 states, finishes 14th in Pennzoil 250

With his 3rd-place finish, Daly is closing in on achieving that $1 million goal team co-owners Ricardo Juncos and Brad Hollinger set for him when he was hired to replace the ousted Agustin Canapino in mid-August. At that time, the second-year Argentine driver had the No. 78 Chevy sitting 23rd among Leaders Circle-eligible entries – a pool of 25 cars where the top-22 in points at the end of the season each earn a roughly $1 million payout from Penske Entertainment for 2025. Before Saturday’s race, the No. 78 sat tied with Daly’s old home, the No. 20 of ECR, for the 22nd and final spot – and was even technically out by virtue of a tiebreaker.

The 35 points from Daly’s podium finish sent the entry leaping ahead three spots into 20th with a pair of races to go this year. Heading into Sunday’s Race 2 of the doubleheader, Daly’s car sits 13 points clear of the cutline, currently occupied by AJ Foyt Racing’s No. 41.

And even in landing that payday for Juncos and Hollinger, Daly flatly admitted he’s by no means guaranteed to hold onto the ride beyond the Sept. 15 season-finale at Nashville Superspeedway. It’s no paddock secret that JHR is strapped for funding at the moment, sporting a pair of black-and-green cars with very few sponsor stickers. Three years into Hollinger’s introduction into IndyCar after having served as a major backer of the Williams Formula 1 team, the American businessman has made it no secret he needs to begin to see progress with his investment that helped bring an intrepid Juncos back onto the IndyCar scene in 2021. Even the world-famous ex-F1 star Romain Grosjean hasn’t seemed to deliver the number of interested partners one might’ve expected during the sides’ nine months together.

Juncos confirmed to reporters earlier this month that he and Hollinger have been in talks with interested partners – including the father of sidelined IndyCar driver Devlin DeFrancesco – though it’s unclear what it could mean for the team’s future.

Daly, who landed backing this year from blockchain network Polkadot to run the Indy 500 with Dreyer and Reinbold Racing, and whose support helped him make an Xfinity series start at IMS in July, is uncertain whether that funding will be back for 2025. At a time when he seems to be finding some pace, results may not be enough.

“In the end, the finances are very difficult to make happen in this world,” Daly said. “They gave me a chance. We made the right moves when we needed to, but what the future holds, I have no idea.

“Thankfully I’ve got next week planned and the weekend after that. And after that, it’s kinda back to the drawing board.”

Besides, with podiums come paydays for IndyCar teams – and as Daly seemed to hint, him too, if he worked it into his last-minute deal. In the midst of a utterly hilarious, stream-of-consciousness back-and-forth among Saturday’s podium finishers, runner-up Will Power asked Daly if he was yet engaged to his girlfriend, Amymarie.

Daly: “No, not yet.”

Power: “Big ring? Going to buy a big one?

Daly: “I finally made some money today, but not enough.”

Power: “Put it in the pot, man. At least $50,000 for the ring.”

Daly: “Well, then I’ve got to get 40 more of these (podiums) then.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IndyCar: Conor Daly delivers Juncos Hollinger W Racing’s first podium