2017 Harding Racing Review:
Wins: 0
Best Finish: 5th (Texas, Gabby Chaves)
Poles: 0
Best Starting Position: 8th (Pocono, Gabby Chaves)
Final Championship Position: 23rd (Gabby Chaves).
Gabby Chaves - #88 Harding Racing Chevrolet
The Colombian returned for his third year of IndyCar action but for the second consecutive season the 2015 IndyCar Rookie of the Year was in a part-time ride. Chaves and Harding Racing united and entered the Indianapolis 500 in April with a Chevrolet aero kit and engine. The team started slow, completing only six laps on the first day and being 32nd out 32 cars but jumped up to third on day two behind Will Power and Hélio Castroneves. The team did not take to the track on what was a windy Wednesday and dropped back down to 30th on Thursday. Chaves improved one position on Fast Friday and ended up topping the pre-qualifying session on Saturday. He ended up 26th at the end of the first qualifying day and moved up to 25th in the Sunday session that set the grid.
In the race, Chaves remained on the lead lap after the first round of pit stops and was in 25th when the red flag came out for Scott Dixon's accident. At the halfway point, he was up to 23rd. He was the final car on the lead lap when the caution came out for Buddy Lazier's accident at lap 122. Chaves set his fastest lap on lap 151 and had gotten up to 17th at that time. He would improve four positions in 16 laps but after making two pit stops under the caution for Charlie Kimball's engine failure and he restarted 22nd, the final car on the lead lap. When Fernando Alonso's engine expired with 21 laps to go Chaves sat it 20th. However, despite only a quarter of a lap of the next nine laps being under green flag conditions, Chaves found himself up to 12th with 11 laps to go. With nine laps to go, he moved up to 11th go after J.R. Hildebrand had to serve a drive-through for jumping the restart and he passed Ed Carpenter with four laps to go for tenth. On the next lap, Chaves overtook Carlos Muñoz for ninth, finishing over seven-tenths ahead of his fellow countryman.
The team decided to run the other two big oval races at Texas and Pocono. Chaves started 20th out of 22 cars at Texas but he kept his nose clean and didn't have any tire issues. Survival earned him a fifth-place finish, the first top five finish of his IndyCar career. At Pocono, Chaves qualified eighth, his first ever top ten start in an IndyCar and the third-best Chevrolet on the grid behind Simon Pagenaud and Will Power. The magic could not be created for a third consecutive race as Chaves did not spend much time in the top ten but he completed all 500 miles and finished 15th.
Numbers to Remember:
2: Chaves had two top ten finishes in his career prior to last year (Ninth at Belle Isle II in 2015 and tenth at Texas in 2015).
12: Chaves' best starting position before he qualified eighth at Pocono was 12th at Milwaukee in 2015.
94.8: The lowest percentage of laps completed in a race for Gabby Chaves was 94.8% when he completed 237 out of 250 laps at Fontana in 2015. His only retirement in 26 starts was at Pocono in 2015 when his engine expired with three laps to go while running in the top five and after having led 31 laps.
Predictions/Goals:
Gabby Chaves is an underrated driver. He has yet to put a wheel wrong in his IndyCar career and how nobody scooped him up early is a shame. The kid brings the car home and he has shown flashes of pace. He hasn't been in the best situations. He was at a single-car team struggling to find funding with Bryan Herta Autosport and he was a mid-season replacement at Dale Coyne Racing during a season where the team didn't have the technical staff that it had in 2017 and now and was woefully behind on ovals.
Even Chaves' current predicament isn't the greatest. Harding Racing was a team that came from nothing at the start of January 2017 and five months later finished in the top ten of the Indianapolis 500. Granted, Chaves and company were helped by a handful of Honda engine failures, a Scott Dixon accident and a J.R. Hildebrand drive-through penalty. If half of those things don't happen Chaves would have finished outside the top fifteen but the team never looked out of place. It is going to be a difficult season for Chaves and Harding Racing. It is going to be the only full-time single-car team. Everyone is starting from page one with the universal aero kits but Harding Racing is still going to lag behind the likes of Team Penske, Andretti Autosport, Chip Ganassi Racing and even A.J. Foyt Racing because it is in its infancy.
Larry Curry runs Harding Racing and Brian Barnhart left IndyCar to be team president. Barnhart would not have left if this wasn't going to be a serious endeavor and I think Harding Racing could become a respectable team but 2017 was the honeymoon phase and now it is time to get to business. There are going to be bad days. There are going to be frustrating days. There are going to be days where the other teams will make Harding Racing look like it is working in slow motion on pit stops. Harding Racing is taking on the big boys. The team has yet to run a road or street course and the team is bound to be humbled.
It doesn't mean the team won't show signs of encouragement. This team will carry some confidence into the three tracks it has experienced and it should use the rest of 2018 as a learning process. If the team gets good results and pulls out a top ten on a road course then great but if all the team can do is complete every lap in a road course race and finish with the leader in its mirror as Chaves fights to finish on the lead lap then the team should not get down on itself. It should look at it as the team has gathered the maximum amount of information from that race and has more data to learn from as the year goes on.
The 2018 Verizon IndyCar Series season opener, the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg will take place on Sunday March 11th at 12:30 p.m. ET on ABC.
