One of the residual effects of Arrow Schmidt Peterson leaving Honda at the end of the 2019 NTT IndyCar Series season to join McLaren and create Arrow McLaren Racing SP is Meyer Shank Racing has to find a new engineering partner.
Because of a complicated set of business issues dating back to McLaren’s Formula One program in 2017, Arrow McLaren Racing SP must be a Chevrolet operation.
Team owner Michael Shank campaigns the No. 60 AutoNation/Sirius XM Honda with 26-year-old driver Jack Harvey. Shank is extremely loyal to Honda for helping both his IMSA Sports Car and NTT IndyCar efforts. Thus, he will remain with that brand and no longer be aligned with Schmidt’s team after this season.
“It does change us,” team owner Michael Shank told NTT INDYCAR Mobile. “Because of the way I do business, especially on the sports car side, it does affect what I have to do.
“The No. 1 thing we have to do is figure out a way to pay for it. I’m in the middle of working on that with my two partners right now. It’s looking good. We don’t have anything to report on it yet. We hope to do it very soon; sooner than later. I have to get everything to bed before I report back.”
Shank told NTT INDYCAR Mobile that Schmidt communicated with him from the beginning of his negotiations with McLaren CEO Zak Brown so that he could be prepared to start looking for an alliance with another Honda team.
“I have nothing but good things on the way they have handled me from Day 1 to and including this new life they are having,” Shank said. “I understood it was coming and it allowed me to start thinking about what is next.
“One of the options on the table is, ‘Do we want to go out and do this on our own?’ We do not believe we are in a position to do that, yet. Someday, we will be, but it’s not there yet. We want to try another technical arrangement if at all possible, get my sponsor signed and see what we can do.”
Shank’s team has some attractive options because Honda has some outstanding teams in the NTT IndyCar Series that could serve as potential partners. Those include Chip Ganassi Racing, Andretti Autosport, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Dale Coyne Racing.
“All bets are on the table,” Shank said. “Different people want different things for their program. We have interest in a lot of those teams. We just don’t have anything to report yet.
“It’s a tricky thing. I’ll be honest, there weren’t calls like there are now two years ago when we started this project. We’re just figuring out how we fit in and where we fit in with a couple of different teams here.”
Team owner Bobby Rahal said last week his team is close to having a third car at RLL. Does that mean an alliance with MSW could be an easy transition?
“It could be,” Shank said. “It definitely could be. Absolutely could be. I just don’t know where we fit in best yet.”
Rahal has a deep engineering staff and Dale Coyne Racing has some great engineers, too.
“Agreed,” Shank said. “But it’s more than that. We are all related in some way or another. What I mean by that is my driver or my crew guys or whoever have all worked with someone on all of these teams. When we look at this, it’s ‘who do we know?’ And, ‘how did we work with them the last time we were there?’ We use our inner-network of knowledge to see if they operate on the same wave-length as we do.
“For instance, maybe Jack is friends with somebody who has used an engineer from one of these teams before and has a lot of input on that. We literally form a database on everything we can learn in our network, what it means to Jack and my technical guys that I employ? How does it line up with how we want to try to go racing?
“They all have monster depth at this point, to be honest. They have a lot of engineers and a lot of plans. Where and how best do we fit in on all of that? Do we have experience with them in the past that we can draw on? That way, I can get pretty transparent to the situation.”
Shank completely understands the situation Schmidt was in to make the McLaren deal happen. That meant leaving Honda with one more year left on the contract.
“It would have been hard for me to do that,” Shank admitted. “There are some people out there like Ganassi or Penske that can cross-pollinate with different manufacturers without too much of an issue. My deal is different.
“In 2015 when I started with prototypes with Honda and transitioned to the factory NSX program in 2017, there are a lot of people that went to bat for me internally at Honda HPD and Acura and stuck their neck out to say, ‘Hey, this guy and team deserves an opportunity’ and stuck their neck out.
“As time clicks on here, and we’ve all done our job they have paid us to do and we’ve had success, I think they have taken it pretty personally when people aren’t loyal. For me, there was no question I was going to stay at Honda across the board. I think it’s the right decision to make for our team.”
This is the third year that Meyer Shank Racing has been a part-time team in the NTT IndyCar Series. It has grown from three races in 2017, to six races in 2018 to a 10-race schedule in 2019.
Harvey and MSR return to the grid for the final two races of the season at Portland International Raceway on Labor Day weekend and the season-finale at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., on Sept. 22.
Next up for the NTT IndyCar Series is Sunday's race at Pocono (Pa.) Raceway. The ABC Supply 500 is the first of four races to close the 2019 season. NBCSN will have the television coverage at 2 p.m. ET (green flag at 2:45 p.m. ET). The Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network provides the radio call, with coverage on SiriusXM Radio (XM 209, Sirius 98, Internet/App 970). Qualifying is Saturday at 12:30 p.m. (delayed on NBCSN until 2:30 p.m.).