"Tried to turn lemons into lemonade" - Jack Harvey makes feelings clear on Indy 500 miss ahead of 2025 return 

Jack Harvey has opened up on feeling low after missing the 2024 Indy 500, and how excited he is to tackle the 109th running of the race this year with Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports.

Harvey went into the 2024 IndyCar season scheduled to compete in 14 out of 17 races with Dale Coyne Racing. The "Greatest Spectacle of Racing" wasn't part of the contract. DCR planned to field veteran Katherine Legge and rookie Nolan Siegel at the prestigious race.

Jack Harvey, who had competed in every Indy 500 since 2017, was disappointed to miss it last year. In a recent interview with IndyCarRadio, the British driver revealed how he "pestered" Dennis Reinbold of DRR to sign him as one of his drivers for the 2025 Indy 500.

"Doing the (Indy) 500 this year was the most central thing we had to do," Harvey said. "Not doing it last year was a... it hurt. Just to be competely transparent, it hurt, it sucked. However, we used that time to be productive, the most we could. I still feel like I learned a lot from working with Katherine (Legge), trying to help Nolan (Siegel), and being on the box through the race. So certainly tried to turn these lemons into lemonade. Yeah, I'm very excited about this coming 500," he said (0:50 onwards).

This year's Indy 500 will be Harvey's eighth attempt at it. He will pilot the No. 24 Chevy with 2014 Indy 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay as his teammate in the No. 23 car.

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Jack Harvey hopes for "all eggs in one basket" strategy to pay off at the Indy 500

NTT IndyCar Series GMR Grand Prix - Source: Getty

The Indy 500 is the only race on the 2025 IndyCar calendar that Jack Harvey will compete in. After five consecutive full-time seasons, the 31-year-old has dropped to a solo-event schedule.

He hopes that having a sole race to ace will smoothen his processes and turn around his IndyCar career.

"The singular focus, everything for us revolves around this. It's very much all eggs in one basket. Sometimes that's how you get stuff done. We go in there, know what we're doing, united and rally behind a common goal," Harvey said via IndyCar.

The British racer's IndyCar career hasn't lived up to the promise he showed in two Indy Lights (now Indy NXT) seasons with Schmidt Peterson Motorsports (now Arrow McLaren) in 2014 and 2015. He finished second in the championship in both years.

Jack Harvey's best Indy 500 results came in the 104th running in 2020, where he finished in 9th position after starting in 20th. His last two outings at the Brickyard with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in 2022 and 2023 were disappointing. He qualified 32nd out of 33 drivers in both iterations and couldn't finish higher than 18th in the race.