Oilpressure

Once again, another successful day at a race track has been accomplished. It was perfect weather, there were cars on-track all day and life was good.

One negative is that Mrs. Oilpressure was a little under the weather. She felt so bad this morning, I actually had to take her back to the hotel right after lunch. Hopefully, she’ll rest up and be ready to go tomorrow.

She usually takes pictures for me on race weekends, but I had to fend for myself today. So instead of posting pictures from a good photographer using a real camera – you’re stuck with my iPhone photos.

Practice was somewhat of a mixed bag. Each team had drivers that performed well, and others who didn’t. If I had to say who was the most impressive overall, it was the cars of Andretti Autosport that had three of the Top-Four. Colton Herta finished practice in the top spot, while Alexander Rossi and Romain Grosjean finished third and fourth respectively. Only last year’s winner, Alex Palou, was able to break up the Andretti stranglehold at the top. Only rookie Devlin DeFrancesco ran in mid-pack – in fourteenth.

Scott Dixon was sixth-quick while Marcus Ericsson posted the ninth fastest time – making the Ganassi cars second, sixth and ninth. Jimmie Johnson was the only Ganassi car to struggle, managing only the twenty-fifth quickest time of the day.

Team Penske was really a mixed bag. Scott McLaughlin had good pace and was fifth quick. But Will Power was sixteenth fastest and Josef Newgarden was only eighteenth quick.

The Little Team That Could, continued to surprise everyone, as Callum Ilot was the seventh fastest car, bringing more exposure to himself and his fledgling Juncos Hollinger Racing team. He was invited to the post-practice press conference, along with Herta and Rossi.

Speaking of Rossi, I’m not sure where he was running early in the session (the scoring pylon at the track was not operating), but I noticed in one of his stops that his crew was changing shocks, springs and everything else on his car. It must’ve worked, since he was third quick on the day.

That’s going to wrap it up today. I’ll close with a couple of more photos I took while down in the pits.

Hopefully, Susan will be back tomorrow and the photos here will be much better. Please check back tomorrow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 29, 2022 at 5:29 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.