Conor Daly has come close to winning a Verizon IndyCar Series race.
He almost singlehandedly won a leg of “The Amazing Race.”
Daly, along with fellow INDYCAR driver Alexander Rossi, finished second in Wednesday’s episode of CBS’s Emmy Award-winning reality adventure series.
The third leg of the around-the-world race saw the 10 remaining teams travel from Belgium to Tangier, Morocco. Once there, teams had to travel by cab through the tightly packed city to find a local fish port and help a fisherman collect and sort the day’s catch.
Rossi and Daly were among the last teams to arrive and struggled to complete the task.
“You’re OCD? I’m not very organizational,” Daly said.
“That’s no excuse,” Rossi replied.
The #TeamINDYCAR pair left the task in last place and in danger of elimination, but that’s when Daly stepped up. After the teams raced to a local merchant, they received a gnome figurine and found a roadblock task asking them to “Rock the Kasbah.”
Daly took on the task, which involved racing through the city to retrieving the gnome. He emulated the movie franchise character Jason Bourne by ziplining around rooftops of the city. Daly quickly made up time on his competitors and, by the time he completed the roadblock and reunited with Rossi, they found themselves in a close race with many of their competitors.
The pair then found the next Detour task, where they had a choice of “Drop It Off,” a Moroccan-style delivery task or “Shake it Off,” a belly dancing task. The drivers chose to dance and search for the three words which would lead them to their final destination for the leg - the Moulay Hafid Palace.
“My dance moves were pretty exceptional,” Rossi said. “I’m proud of Conor. We were coming in last and he made up a lot time for us.”
But it wasn’t quite enough time. Team Yale, dating debaters Henry Zhang and Evan Lynyak, won the leg and a vacation to Switzerland. NBA stars Cedric Ceballos and Shawn Marion arrived last, but as it was a non-elimination leg, they remained in the race but will have to complete a speed bump during the next leg.
“Just like INDYCAR. A nice, close finish,” host Phil Koeghan told the drivers as they arrived at the finish.
“They got us by a nose,” Daly said.