Conor Daly has a new, not very discreet number...

The American will therefore not drive the No. 78 car as planned this season, but the No. 76. A more than minor change in itself, but when the car Juncos Hollinger Racing came out of the truck, it became clear that this change came with new sponsorship for a team that badly needed it. Indeed, JHR had to call on the substantial financial support of Sting Ray Robb this season, in order to secure the services of Conor Daly, whose budgets are much tighter.

So it's not just a number that's displayed on the nose, roll bar and rear wing of Daly's Dallara-Chevrolet, but the logo of the oil company... "76", known in particular for its long-term sponsorship of the NASCAR in the 80s, 90s and 2000s. The "orange balls" of the company then called Union 76 were flourishing all around the circuits, and it seems that now they are coming to interfere in IndyCar ! However, no new livery, and above all, no official communication from Juncos Hollinger Racing around this new partnership, for the moment.

The team itself was reportedly not informed of the new deal until Friday morning, when the new number stickers had to be integrated. A similar case occurred with HMD Motorsports in Indy NXT, with Caio Collet now also driving the #76, but with no official mention of the new sponsor.

A conflict could actually be at the origin of this "silent" communication, since IndyCar has as its official partner the oil company Shell, whose brand is present on all the single-seaters in the field. Shell also supplies the renewable fuel that powers all the single-seaters in the championship, and the arrival of another oil company within a team could potentially be frowned upon.

This would therefore recall another conflict that had hit NASCAR in the early 2000s. Nextel, the telecommunications brand of the Sprint group, became the official sponsor of the Cup Series in 2004. The #31 car of Richard Childress Racing displayed the colors of Cingular, another telephone operator. In order not to break this sponsorship agreement, the brand was still allowed to display itself in the NASCAR Nextel Cup, until it was bought by AT&T, which then decided to display its own logo. This was not to the taste of NASCAR, which then took the brand to court, and the #31 car then drove without sponsor logos until an amicable settlement, which allowed AT&T to display itself until the end of 2008. IndyCar's deal with Shell is smaller, so things should go better, but we are never far from a surprise...

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