INDIANAPOLIS -- As surprising as his third-place start in Saturday’s INDYCAR Grand Prix is, Jack Harvey isn’t a stranger to positive results at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

In 2015, Harvey won two Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires races at the famed track -- one on the road course and one on the 2.5-mile oval.

On Friday, Harvey put himself in position to win an NTT IndyCar Series race for the first time by recording his best starting position in 14 series races in his career. When Saturday’s race starts at 3:50 p.m. ET, Harvey will start third.

Harvey, a 26-year-old native of Bassingham, England, won two Indy Lights races at IMS in 2015. He won the pole for one of two races on the track’s 14-turn, 2.439-mile permanent road course, then won the race. A few days later, he won the Freedom 100 on IMS’ 2.5-mile oval.

“I wish I could do it more often than just this place,” Harvey said. “I’ve done well here from the first time I came here. … You come here with a little extra confidence. We’re working hard to figure out why we can’t replicate the success we’ve had here more frequently. That’s the goal. But certainly this place has been fairly kind to me. Hopefully It’s kind to me tomorrow.”

The positive result Friday is part of an overall improvement for Harvey, in his third season in the NTT IndyCar Series. His previous best start -- seventh -- came at the 2019 season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida, in March. He followed that with the best finish of his career (10th) and matched it two weeks later at Circuit of The Americas in Austin, Texas.

Since he moved to the NTT IndyCar Series in 2017, Harvey has been a part-time competitor, racing just three times in 2017 and six times in 2018. So far this year, he’s competed in the first four races in the Meyer Shank Racing with Arrow SPM No. 60 Honda sponsored by AutoNation and SiriusXM.

“It’s still very part-time,” Harvey said. “It’s nice in moments like this where we can apply a little bit of pressure to a few other people to say, ‘Why don’t we do this full-time?’ I don’t know that we expected to be third today, but certainly we’ll take it.”