ELKHART LAKE, Wisc. – Nolan Siegel was seething as he spoke to a pair of reporters Friday morning at Road America, as the 19-year-old detailed the mechanical issue that saw him start Indy NXT’s Detroit round from pitlane and ultimately finish four laps down in 18th. The horrid luck dropped the Palo, Alto, Calif., native from 25 points back of championship leader Jacob Abel to 44 back with just nine rounds remaining.

A manageable deficit to claw back from? Sure, but one that would likely require a near-perfect close to his 2024 campaign, up against a rival in Abel that through five rounds had finished first or second four times.

Now sitting third in points with Andretti Global’s Louis Foster passing him at Detroit, Siegel was ready ahead of opening practice that afternoon at Road America to throw caution to the wind in pursuit of a championship he was seen by many as a favorite for entering this season.

“In a year where we’ve pretty much been top-3 every race weekend, it’s not what we needed at all. It’s unacceptable. We can’t do that, so I need to stop making mistakes, and everyone on the team needs to do everything perfectly, and that’ll be the goal for the rest of the season,” Siegel said. “Now, we have nothing to lose, so I can get pretty aggressive where the other two are maybe more in conservation mode.

“I can push super hard and have nothing to lose at this point. I have no interest in finishing third in the championship. If I finish third or seventh, I couldn't care less, so I’m going to do whatever I need to do, and if they want to get out of the way, they can. If not, then it is what it is.”

Just how serious was he that morning about his Indy NXT title pursuits? When asked about prospects of adding additional races to his part-time IndyCar schedule with Dale Coyne Racing — which at that time only included Toronto the rest of the year — Siegel demurred. After failing to qualify for the Indianapolis 500, Siegel was set to only have two points-paying starts under his belt by the end of his season, meaning he could make two more starts and still keep his prospective IndyCar Rookie of the Year pursuit intact for another season — presumably 2025.

The problem? All other Indy NXT rounds on this year’s schedule, outside Toronto, fall on IndyCar weekends — meaning he’d have to perform double-duty, unable to truly give both his full attention.

“I would love to do more IndyCar races, but right now I’m by no means out of this (Indy NXT) championship, and I don’t want to do anything to compromise that,” he said Friday. “But if there’s an opportunity in IndyCar that I think will be beneficial for me, then I’ll certainly take it.”

A little over three hours later, Siegel was abandoning his No. 39 HMD Motorsports Indy NXT car mid-practice. Not long after, Siegel was sitting in the No. 78 of Juncos Hollinger Racing, turning practice laps in Chevy IndyCar equipment for the first time in his career. By Saturday morning, he’d withdrawn from the Indy NXT race weekend entirely, ultimately surrendering 35 more points to Abel’s championship cushion and leaving him in an increasingly insurmountable 79-point hole with eight rounds remaining.

So what changed?

According to five separate paddock sources — four of them from separate IndyCar teams and one driver manager, all speaking on pure informed speculation and without direct knowledge of the situation — there’s only one reasonable answer.

Siegel, with his budding talents in the cockpit and his father Mark Siegel’s multi-million-dollar bankroll as a successful venture capitalist, seems a very likely option to finish out the IndyCar season in the No. 78 Chevy, likely then foregoing his Indy NXT title pursuit in the process.

‘We had to do something’: Agustin Canapino takes leave of absence from Juncos Hollinger

Skipping Road America Indy NXT race a telltale sign of bigger picture

For a team in need of a replacement driver 90 minutes ahead of the start of Friday afternoon practice at Road America — having deemed Agustin Canapino not mentally fit to hop in the car and mandating he take a 'leave of absence' in the wake of the week’s online controversy with his fans and Theo Pourchaire — the initial choice of Siegel is understood to have been moreso around who was there and ready on a moment’s notice.

After running just seven laps in his Indy NXT practice — half or less of most of the rest of the field — Siegel hopped out of his HMD machine and got situated at the JHR transporters, starting the IndyCar practice about 15 minutes late.

There was nothing pre-ordained or planned about this, and yet, no one — not even HMD Motorsports team president Mike Maurini — was disappointed or surprised to see Siegel jumping at the opportunity to add IndyCar to his schedule that weekend.

“We want to win races and championships, but we know at the end of the day that we’re a race team that people come to to advance into IndyCar, so when there’s an opportunity to do IndyCar, and you don’t take it, you could be kicking yourself for that down the road,” he told IndyStar on Saturday morning.

The curiosity though, according to multiple sources, is regarding why Siegel chose to solely focus on IndyCar this past weekend, if indeed that Indy NXT championship was so important. Though doubling up during an IndyCar and Indy NXT weekend are rare, by no means is it outlandish — with drivers from Ed Carpenter to Carlos Munoz having done so before.

Insider: Canapino's response to hate-filled messages from fans is troubling

Yes, it would certainly be easier to execute had it been planned ahead of time, but if JHR simply needed someone capable to hop in the seat for the weekend, there’s no reason to think Siegel couldn’t have done a fine job while still keeping his priority elsewhere.

After all, he’s in his second season in the series and won as a rookie in Indy NXT at Road America a year ago — having left the track with a 40-point championship lead to boot. One would imagine Siegel still could’ve hung in the top-5, barring any contact or mechanical failures, and salvaged a damage-control-like weekend and live to fight another day in the championship hunt, while keeping the seat of JHR’s No. 78 warm — particularly without Foster or Abel ultimately winning the Indy NXT race.

And yet, it was Siegel and his father who Friday evening proposed to Maurini the young driver step away from Indy NXT for the weekend. In the end, both sides were on board.

According to Siegel, “I think I could’ve done both and compromised both, or done (IndyCar) and gone all-in on it. And this is too good an opportunity to miss out on or compromise.”

Knowing you’ve already made previous IndyCar starts, and knowing you’ll have at least one more later this year with DCR, and with how last-minute this opportunity is without a lick of preparation, one might argue Siegel’s “opportunity” to truly shine this weekend at Road America was limited. His 23^rd-place finish one lap down, without any contact or hiccups, largely fit what he said he’d deem a successful weekend Saturday morning: “run as many laps as we can, learn, come out clean, no drama.”

That is, unless this opportunity could be seen as a jumping off point for a much larger role.

Consequence: McLaren severs ties with JHR after death threats sent to Pourchaire, Canapino statement

Siegel could be key to fix JHR's multiple issues

Of those IndyStar spoke to on this topic at Road America, none were too surprised at the idea of Siegel hopping into the No. 78 at Road America and riding if for the rest of the season — if not longer. In fact, the most surprising prospect, they all agreed, would be Siegel giving up any chance to score Indy NXT points at Road America, and then rejoining HMD at Laguna Seca like normal and trying to grind to make up ground on Abel and Foster down the closing stretch.

Though he’s understood not to be in dire need of the Indy NXT scholarship of $850,000 (according to last year’s figures) in order to make the jump to IndyCar in 2025, actively choosing to make that title that much more difficult to achieve, for a chance to make a last-minute one-off run outside the top-20 in IndyCar with a brand-new-team, was perplexing to many. That is, unless Detroit is the last Indy NXT start Siegel makes.

In recent weeks, JHR’s fate has been a popular topic of conversation around the paddock, with Brad Hollinger understood by many to be dissatisfied with the program’s current trajectory and frustrated with the pace at which IndyCar is growing in popularity and series ownership’s willingness to spend money at-will to supercharge it.

He entered the sport in August 2021 as part of a journey that would bring Ricardo Juncos’ long-term project back to the forefront of American open-wheel racing, and Hollinger is known to have spent mightily to upgrade equipment and undergo a massive hiring spree this offseason.

And yet, the two black and green chassis remain largely bare compared to most teams in the paddock on a regular basis — with the No. 78 without a primary sponsor altogether this weekend at Road America. Just this past week, the team lost its strategic alliance with Arrow McLaren in consequence of the team and Canapino’s handling of the death threats sent to Pourchaire after he ran into the Argentine driver during the Detroit Grand Prix. In consequence, gone are the papaya accents that pointed toward the alliance, along with the chance to land overflow sponsors from Arrow McLaren’s pool of partners.

The sponsor — and sponsorship funding — deficit, combined with Hollinger’s believed unease and the fact the cars sat 18^th (No. 77) and 21^st (No. 78) in entrant points entering Road America paint a picture that could be significantly improved by an additional backer like Siegel’s father.

And there’s time, too, to work all this out this week. JHR was already slated to miss Tuesday’s series Open Test at Milwaukee, due to Romain Grosjean running at Le Mans. With a trio of Chip Ganassi Racing drivers also with the same conflict, IndyCar has given the two teams a separate test date in the near-future — meaning, in relation to the future of the No. 78, there’s no decision to rush into within 36 hours of the checkered flag at Road America. And with Siegel also running Le Mans, he was already slated to miss Indy NXT’s test at The Mile the following day.

In short, no awkward announcements about stand-in drivers or leaving seats open for a test, are necessary in the coming days.

It gives all sides involved — Juncos, Hollinger, Canapino and the Siegels — a week or so to hash out a plan for the future. Should the Argentine driver have a change of heart and see the view of those who found his rogue statement a week ago disappointing, perhaps there’s still a chance he holds onto the seat for the rest of the season. But drivers like Canapino who bring little — if any — funding to a team have long been easy to part ways with midseason for any number of reasons.

Just ask Conor Daly and Jack Harvey from last year, for starters.

"Now that he's opened the door," one source told IndyStar this weekend, "who knows."

As that source said, 10 days ago, JHR officials likely wouldn’t have had any remote thought to replacing the veteran touring car driver whose CV is decorated with title upon title — his countryman Juncos especially. Now, Ricardo may be facing an angry, fed up business partner, a volatile driver and father-son combo who seemingly could fix it all (at the cost of further enflaming a significant portion of its fan base).

Not only would the driver switch make sense, helping give JHR a fresh outlook, an influx of funding and a young talent with which it can build with for at least a couple years, but it’s hard to make sense of how Siegel handled this past weekend any other way. After all, an Indy NXT title and potential IndyCar Rookie of the Year honors are nice, but fast-tracking to IndyCar, ultimately, has always been the goal at heart.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Why Juncos Hollinger Racing could hire Nolan Siegel to replace Agustin Canapino