At Speed - IndyCar Podcast

It was somewhat of a chance encounter that put Jim Meyer and Mike Shank together. But Meyer, SiriusXM CEO, liked the way Shank led his Pataskala, Ohio-based race team, and having been bitten by the auto racing bug decades before, Meyer wanted in. The rest, both of them have resolved, is history in the making.

Driver Jack Harvey and Meyer Shank Racing team founder Mike Shank have been plotting a full season foray in IndyCar for years. Covid-19, of course, stepped in and delayed it even more. But barring another hiccup, the season will start next Saturday night at Texas, and to say Harvey is pumped would be an understatement.

Most successful auto racing teams have a driver in their lineage around whom their competitiveness first surfaced. That driver for Meyer Shank Racing was Brazilian Ozz Negri, who joined the AtSpeed Podcast to reminisce about putting the pedal to the metal for his good friend and team founder Mike Shank.

As Mike Shank worked to make his team a success, he assembled a core of mainstays within the shop. Then came along a succession of influencers seemingly at just the right times, Shank said, not the least of whom is Brian Bailey of Rocky Fork Company, who turned his passion for racing into being part of MSR after a chance meeting with Shank.

The Covid19 shutdown still has race teams such as Meyer Shank Racing parked. But team owner Mike Shank is cautiously optimistic the IndyCar season can begin June 6 at Texas. He's raring to go, because as he recalls in this episode, racing has been his passion since he was 5 years old.

At least drivers are finding a way to vent their competitive frustrations by doing some iRacing. But for the owners of IndyCar and other series race teams, such as Meyer Shank Racing's Mike Shank, this is a time of angst tinged with hope as the world deals with the Coronavirus.

A week ago Mike Shank had his Meyer Shank Racing team poised to begin its first full season in IndyCar racing, only to see the opener at St. Pete cancelled. This week, like everyone else, he and his team are on hold, all revved up with no place to race, as the United States battles the coronavirus.

Mike Shank and his Pataskala-based Meyer Shank Racing team have been working for two decades for the upcoming weekend, the start of its first full-time season in the NTT IndyCar car series. As could be expected, Shank is excited as the team preps to put driver Jack Harvey on the track Friday for the airport-street race in St. Petersburg, Fla. And as team owner Shank said to AtSpeedpodcast co-host Tim May, he expects his group to show it more than belongs as the year ensues.

As horrific as the Ryan Newman crash was in the Daytona 500, Mike Shank and Tim May talk about how far safety has come in auto racing, especially in the last 30 years. They touch on other subjects, too, in this latest edition of the At Speed Podcast brought to you by Rocky Fork Company.

Mike Shank was encouraged by his team's first IndyCar test of the season, at Circuit of The Americas outside Austin, is fired up about the changes Roger Penske is bringing to the Indy 500, and he and Tim May speak on who they like in the Daytona 500.