Harvey finishes sixth while Castroneves finishes 21st
Indianapolis, Ind. (14 August 2021) – Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) made its return to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway since taking home the coveted Indianapolis 500 victory in May.
With two yellows late in the 85-lap Big Machine Spiked Coolers Grand Prix to spice up the pace of the race, Jack Harvey brought home a sixth place finish while Helio Castroneves finished 21st on Saturday.
As a part of NASCAR’s Brickyard weekend, MSR took to the two-day race weekend back at the yard of bricks. With Harvey starting seventh and Castroneves 23rd, the MSR drivers diced through though the initial laps, each advancing from their starting positions.
Harvey showed pace early on in the No. 60 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda, never dropping outside of the top ten. Starting on Firestone primary tires, it was the team’s strategy call to run the rest of the race on alternates.
Castroneves opted for a similar strategy in the No. 06 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda and made his first pit stop to swap tire compounds on lap 11. Once on alternate tires, Castroneves tried to manage rear grip throughout his stint as he made several moves to race up the field. The four-time Indy 500 winning brought the No. 06 Honda up to P11 by lap 62.
It was a fast race to the finish with 68 laps of green flag running until the first of two yellow flags was deployed with 18 laps to go. Harvey and Castroneves restarted from P6 and P20, respectively.
It was a quick restart before the field went back to yellow with just nine laps to go. Unfortunately while running 18th Castroneves was caught out by a car that spun ahead which left the Brazilian to take a detour in the grass and lose five positions.
It was a six lap sprint to the finish for the field following the second restart. Harvey fought off oncoming competition to finish sixth – his second best finish at the IMS road course (third in 2019). Castroneves made up two additional position in the closing laps to finish 21st.
Meyer Shank Racing will return to INDYCAR action next weekend as the series heads to World Wide Technology Raceway for its first oval race since the Indianapolis 500. Harvey will lead the charge for MSR at WWRT and Castroneves will return to action at Portland International Raceway.
Meyer Shank Racing Driver Quotes:
Jack Harvey, No. 60 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda: “It was a pretty exciting race. We had a good pace from the start and really carried that on throughout the race. It was just a weird sequence a couple of times when we were trying to get around (Alex) Rossi. It might have been that Rossi’s tires were burning off quicker than ours were and we ended up having to spend a lot of overtake just to try and get by him – and in the end weren’t able to. So then we were light on overtake for the rest of the race. The team did really well today. These kinds of performances are what I knew we were capable of all year. There’s a lot of performance and a lot of potential in this team, we all know that, and it’s nice to have a day where you realize that.”
Helio Castroneves, No. 06 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda: “We started conservative and kept it going. The MSR team did a great job, our SiriusXM / AutoNation Honda was improving, but unfortunately we were in 20th position most of the time. We probably would have made up a lot of positions, but we got caught up in the 21 car getting spun in front of me and I had to avoid it and lost some positions. But again, another learning process and we just got to keep it going and I’m looking forward to Portland.”
