Inside HMD’s Foyt-allied Legge Indy 500 effort: “IndyCar is a drug”
- Archie O’Reilly
- 2 hours ago
- 10 min read
This time one month ago, it would have been a tall order for HMD Motorsports team president Mike Maurini to picture how the weeks to follow would play out. It was a mere pipe dream - often on his mind but not remotely on his agenda.
And yet, on a test day with his Indy NXT team at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course midway through April, a fanciful reality began to set in. That Tuesday evening, after the first of two days of running, he was on the road and headed back to Indianapolis, soon to be bound for Long Beach, when there came a phone call of stark confirmation.
It was quite poetic that he should be in transit back home again to Indiana as he spoke with HMD Motorsports team owner Henry Malukas and AJ Foyt Racing team president Larry Foyt. A deal was real and seriously in motion.
“We had a conversation at that point and it was like: ‘Yeah, there’s all this stuff in place so let’s try and go ahead and do this,’” Maurini recalls to DIVEOMB. “[But] there were several meetings that had to happen in Long Beach; there were a lot of sign-offs that had to happen by other people higher up than I am or higher up than Larry is.”
At the turn of the calendar to April, affairs had started to become a little desperate for IndyCar as the Indianapolis 500 field struggled to reach its 33-driver capacity. With that, the possible opportunity had arisen for HMD to support the running of a third car supplied by the Foyt team, with whom they are now allied in Indy NXT, for May’s proceedings.
Maurini and company were immediately keen.
Things moved quickly as IndyCar’s most recent race weekend in Long Beach, only a week-and-a-half from the annual Indy 500 open test, provided a crunch juncture to iron out the details of a possible programme. Within a matter of days from there, things started to be formalised to the point of finality.
“I flew home on Monday [after Long Beach]. We tested again in St. Louis on Wednesday and Wednesday morning is when we said: ‘Okay, we’re to do this,’” Maurini explains. “Unfortunately, AJ Foyt Racing’s Caio Collet was testing Thursday and I believe the [Indy 500] car was in that trailer at St. Louis, so it didn’t get back to the shop until Thursday night.”
But crucially, no matter the delays, the car was HMD-bound. This was happening.
With barely a five-day turnaround from receiving the car to getting out on track for the first time, Maurini and his team knew from the outset what a seismic project this would be. But there was never a doubt in his mind as to whether he wanted HMD to be involved in the programme, no matter how incredibly lofty a task getting prepared would be.
So one day prior to the test on Monday, it was finally revealed publicly that a Chevrolet-powered entry would be fielded between HMD and Foyt, piloted by Katherine Legge, to complete the field of 33 drivers. For the former, a much-sought-after shot at IndyCar’s staple race and a challenge to relish.
“I want to be in IndyCar. ‘No’ is really not in my vocabulary,” asserts Maurini, who will dovetail between his role with HMD and spotting for Team Penske’s David Malukas across the Month of May. “In Indy NXT, when we started with two drivers, we ended up running 10. So it’s not like drivers came and we said: ‘No, you can’t race with us.’
“We figured out a way to do it. And we’re kind of in the same boat here. We have an 80,000-square-foot shop; it’s all nice, all decked out for IndyCar racing… but we can’t get there right now. IndyCar is the coolest racing on earth. The best way to do it was to partner with a programme or be involved in a programme that’s at the Speedway already.”
Arguably the most straightforward part of the process was the onboarding of a driver, given the No.11 entry itself was essentially formed to enable Legge to return to the Indy 500 field with the continued backing of her primary partner, e.l.f Cosmetics.
“Katherine was already chosen,” Maurini details. “There was a driver that had sponsorship and a big brand behind her. She’s a female in motorsports. So it wasn’t so much choosing a driver; it was the assembling of the programme to try and put the driver into the race.”
More challenging, after receiving the car in time for a first full day of work only on the Friday prior to the initial Tuesday test outing, was assembling a team to build a superspeedway-ready package thrust into their hands at late notice, with barely even half-a-week to get track-ready.
“About a month ago, there was some mention that Colton Herta was going to be the 33rd entry. There was not even a talk about this programme,” Maurini acknowledges. “To put in perspective how far behind [we are], we know teams on June 1st start for next year’s Indy 500. Where most teams get a year to prepare for this race, we basically had five days.
“It was set up as a road course car, was only half-a-car; there was no engine in it yet or anything like that. So it was a long weekend. There were three 20-hour days and then [Monday] as well at the track. It’s been an undertaking but HMD wants to be in IndyCar so we’re proving that, hey, it doesn’t matter what the task is, we’re going to try and do it.”
Alongside HMD personnel from their Indy NXT outfit, parts of Foyt’s existing No.4 and No.14 crews chipped in across the weekend to get the car in runnable shape, though while also having to prioritise their own in-house programmes.
A team for the No.11 car has been assembled, consisting in noteworthy part of HMD’s own personnel. Mike Reggio, who oversees the engineering department for HMD, is Legge’s engineer, while Alex Védie, engineer for Salvador de Alba in Indy NXT, has taken up a performance engineering role. Nick Woloshin and Zach Mollohan are acting as a “tag team” across the systems engineer and DAG (data acquisition) roles.
In a more all-encompassing capacity, HMD’s managing director Luke Varley - previously driver coach for Malukas - is taking on the duty of the team manager, essentially running the car while Maurini juggles his spotting commitments with Penske.
Plenty of faith has had to be placed in a deep pool of talent within the HMD ranks, given the short timeframe within which the deal was pulled together.
“This is an actual HMD Motorsports entry. HMD is registered as an IndyCar team. We entered the car,” Maurini clarifies. “[But] one of [HMD or Foyt] couldn’t do it by ourselves. On our side, we supplied a lot of the pit stuff, have hospitality walls and flooring and that kind of stuff. We supplied three engineers.
“In the Indy 500, there’s more entries than normal so every team’s hiring people. Every team was able to hire their people October, November last year when they knew they were going to do this. We obviously couldn’t pull the trigger on that until last week.
“A week ago, we started trying to find the proper people. So we [also] have some fill-ins at the test who won’t be here for the race weekend because there were some people who have a lot of IndyCar experience that couldn’t get away from work or anything for this test.”
HMD are stationed separately to the two full-season Foyt entries of Collet and Santino Ferrucci in the garage area at the Speedway. But on an engineering front, there is to be a constant, transparent line of communication between the allies.
“At the end of the day, all the engineers and drivers go together to debrief - same in the morning,” Maurini spells out. “It’s a completely shared and open concept across the three entries.”
The two-day test got off to a challenging start for the HMD/Foyt entry. Running their installation lap ahead of the two-hour refresher session on Tuesday, the team discovered a clutch issue which required fixing. Further to that, there was a minor braking problem - not a failure but enough to possibly compromise safety - which also denied the car from running.
As a consequence, Legge was unable to complete ‘Phase 2’ of the refresher programme in the allotted time, which would have confirmed eligibility for the subsequent all-car session, and was therefore denied four hours of afternoon running.
“We knew coming into this, we’re going to have issues,” Maurini admits. “There’s going to be stuff that you forget. There’s going to be stuff that’s overlooked. So we didn’t do the install at 10 o’clock, just wanted to make sure that everything was a hundred percent perfect.
“Went out there… obviously everything wasn’t a hundred percent perfect at noon. But we needed the extra day; we just didn’t have the extra day. So now we have it so it was perfect.”
IndyCar organised a special session for Wednesday for Legge to be able to complete her refresher. HMD had lobbied for it to take place at 9:00, before the day’s running to ensure no more track time was lost, but it was ultimately slated for noon - in the planned lunch break after the initial two-hour all-car session.
After track drying pushed the day’s first running back to 11:15 anyway, the refresher was eventually run at 13:15, with Legge completing the necessary phase with 10 minutes of the hour-long session to spare. The entire programme was then completed with over an hour remaining in the following all-car session.
Despite the lost running, there is at least some platform for the team heading into May after Legge logged 82 laps on Wednesday. And in any case, if nothing else, the open test provides ample opportunity to eliminate any such big issues before the real deal - particularly pertinent for an operation so hastily assembled.
“Obviously the fit and finish of the car is not what a speedway car should be,” Maurini explains. “If you’re looking for half-a-tenth or a tenth of a mile an hour, we’re probably not there because we’re piecing together bodywork and floor and stuff like that.
“But we’re not racing today; we’re racing five weeks from now. So there’s a fair bit of time to try and get ready for that. Obviously not a year’s worth of time, but we continue to work at it and there’s a group of dedicated people here that want to succeed.”
Some pressure is alleviated in May by the fact that bumping is not expected in qualifying, meaning while in some ways less gratifying, there is at least the guarantee of making the field for a team that may otherwise naturally be on the bubble. This way, there is scope to build more slowly, without frantic days of panic in an attempt to find qualifying speed.
But as much as expectations remain realistic, there is the weight of this being a critical proving ground for an HMD team already with significant success on the IndyCar ladder and looking to make the next step from merely a feeder-series organisation.
“We know, is qualifying on pole in the cards? Probably not,” Maurini concedes. “Is winning the race on the cards? You never know. It’s the Indy 500 - anything can happen. But at the end of the day, Katherine’s best finish is 22nd. If we can best that, then that’s a win for all of us. But we want to show that we can be here and we can do this.”
And already, Maurini has received interest from drivers on the IndyCar ladder and beyond about future possibilities, should the programme continue beyond this year.
“I probably had two or three drivers - some in Indy NXT, some not in Indy NXT, some in Europe - that have contacted me and said: ‘Hey, if you’re going to do this next year, let me know. We have budget. We have sponsors.’ So it’s good to have your name out here.
“There’s opportunity maybe for the future. There’s other teams that add entries for this race; maybe they’ll call on us in the future. Speaking with Larry, I’m like: ‘Hey, if we do this next year, we should start in five weeks for next year.’”
Indeed, before even fielding this first effort, Maurini is thinking about 2027.
“I’ve already decided,” he insists of a future Indy 500 attempt. “If we can pull this off this year and do a decent job, if we don’t qualify last or we better Katherine’s best finish, that’s a win. But to me, the sport and the Indy 500 and IndyCar to me is like a drug.
“This is probably one of the most expensive drugs in the world but it’s keeping everyone off the streets and it’s a good time. I’m already committed for next year. It’s just a matter of the puzzle pieces around the table, you’ve just got to build it.”
But his ambitions for the team, which was founded by David Malukas’ parents and debuted in Indy Lights with Malukas in 2019, go beyond just Indianapolis.
Of course, Maurini is aware of the challenge of breaking into the IndyCar field full-time - made more challenging by the recent news that all entries outside of the Indy 500 must be chartered come next season. But that is not proving a deterrent as he continues to attempt to find workarounds for the limitations.
“There’s two different ways that you can react to it,” he assesses of the charter revelation. “One is frustrated and annoyed, which okay, that’s great.
“But you have to look at it from [series owner] Roger Penske’s side. He has a group of teams that are invested in the series already that he needs to protect and this is the best way to protect them. So he’s driving the value of those programmes up, which is great.
“On our side, we look at it as maybe we can’t get in but how can we adjust to better or help those teams? Maybe we turn into more of a focused driver development programme that actually has partnerships with multiple different teams to place drivers in certain spots.
“Maybe they’re a junior driver for Juncos Racing or Chip Ganassi Racing and they’re racing with HMD - just like the Red Bull junior drivers are racing with different teams over there or the McLaren junior drivers are racing with different teams over there.”
Possibly more conventionally, their Indy 500 partnership with Foyt could provide a roadmap for something wider. Come 2028, Chevrolet will own a manufacturer charter to partner with a non-three-car team to provide an additional entry. Keen for involvement, that has inevitably caught Maurini and HMD’s attention.
This only adds further to the audition-like nature of the Indy 500 challenge for the team amid hope that it can provide the foundations for something bigger.
“[The] Chevy charter that’s not spoken for, they haven’t assigned that to any team yet. There’s Ed Carpenter Racing, there’s Juncos Hollinger Racing, there’s AJ Foyt Racing that can all add cars. There’s Abel that could add a car. There’s HMD now.
“So we’re inadvertently throwing our hat in the mix for that. And the way that we’re doing it is if we’re partnering with Foyt here and if Chevy does call upon us and say: ‘Hey, we want to support HMD or we want HMD to support us in our project. How do we do this?’
“We have a plan or a route that we can actually go now.”
