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Our “perfect” weekend has continued at Road America. Unfortunately, a revised forecast for Saturday has rain in the forecast, but Sunday is still looking good.

We followed the advice of a friend and tried something new for lunch. We usually head to the top of the hill overlooking Turns 7 & 8, and have a brat while watching race cars. A friend suggested we try the broasted chicken at a stand outside of Turn Three. It was excellent! We now have a new concession stand and dish to work into our Road America rotation.

For the afternoon, we rode around and came across a few changes. The biggest change is a new viewing area that has been created that overlooks The Kink on the backstretch.

We went up there and it is really a spectacular view. It was so spectacular that I forgot to take a photo up there. I’ll be up there again, so I’ll get one later.

After lunch, we ate more. At The Beach area that was added last year, Susan got a bag of Kettle Corn that was almost bigger than she was.

As practice time for the NTT IndyCar Series approached, we decided to have a mid-afternoon cup of ice cream, right next to the IndyCar paddock. As you can see, they certainly give you your money’s worth.

Just before practice started, we headed for the pits. We were greeted with the news that Agustin Canapino would be stepping out of his Juncos Hollinger Racing No. 78 – at least for this race. This is a result of the social media attacks from Canapino’s fans in Argentina on Theo Porchair, after the two got together at Detroit last week. With Canapino out this week, the team has called on Nolan Siegel to drive the car for the weekend.

This news stole the thunder from this morning’s news that David Malukas will be driving the No. 66 for Meyer Shank Racing for the rest of the season, beginning with the next race at Laguna Seca.

As far as practice went, Alex Palou picked up where he left off after winning this race in 2023. He lead Practice One with a time of 1:43.1709. Colton Herta was the second-fastest. That is nothing new. The 2019 pole-sitter of this race really likes the flow of this track.

Maybe the biggest surprise among the front-runners is that AJ Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci was third quick. We are used to seeing Ferrucci do well on ovals, but he is now becoming a threat on non-ovals. He came into the media center after practice and said that he is now really getting comfortable with the technical alliance with Team Penske. That would seem to be the case, since Ferrucci outpaced all three Team Penske drivers in Practice One.

Josef Newgarden was the fastest Team Penske driver, and the fourth-quick on the day. RLLR’s Christian Lungaard rounded out the Top-Five, meaning that five different teams made up the Top-Five.

Last week’s winner, Scott Dixon, was the sixth quick, with Will Power and Scott McLaughlin right behind him at seventh and eighth. Pato O’Ward and Marcus Armstrong rounded out the Top-Ten.

With rain in in the forecast for Saturday, that has the potential to throw a curve to the field. The is still new pavement on this track, and it may have the tendency to get slick when wet. We may see some big names starting at the back of the field on Sunday.

Tomorrow’s practice gets underway at 10:10 am CDT (local time), and will be shown live on Peacock. Then qualifying will begin at 2:25 pm CDT and will also be carried on Peacock.

That will do it for us today. We have dinner reservations in Sheboygan at our normal Friday Night Fish Fry spot. We will be here probably around 9:30 tomorrow morning. Please check back then. I will close, as usual, with some of Susan’s photos from the day.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on June 7, 2024 at 5:37 pm and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.