Oilpressure

It always does my heart (and ego) good to see my choice for the weekend’s race win, do well in the first practice session of the weekend. Not only did Alexander Rossi do well, he led the first session with a time of 1:41.7790. How does that compare with last year’s speed, now that the new surface is down? Rossi was on the pole at Road America last year, with a time of 1:44.8656.  By the time Qualifying rolls around tomorrow afternoon, I imagine more time will be whittled down.

In fact, the entire field went faster than Rossi’s pole speed from last year. Simon Pagenaud was the slowest car on the track today, and his time was 1:43.4092.

Rossi was in the Media Center for the post-practice press conference and did not seem overly impressed with his speed today and felt like there was more in the car.

I guess the surprise from the session was that David Malukas was second quick on the day, with a time of 1:41.8652. Malukas has not had an impressive second year in IndyCar, after turning a lot of heads in the paddock last year as a rookie. A good weekend at Road America can close out the first half of the season on a high note.

Current points leader Alex Palou was third quick on the day, with a time of 1:41.9486. Scott Dixon and Pato O’Ward rounded out the Top-Five. The remainder of the Top-Ten consisted of Marcus Ericsson, Christian Lundgaard, Felix Rosenqvist, Colton Herta and Marcus Armstrong.

The fastest Penske car was Scott McLaughlin at fifteenth quick. Josef Newgarden and Will Power were sixteenth and seventeenth respectively. Chip Ganassi had all four of his cars in the Top-Ten, while the fastest Penske car  was fifteenth. I don’t think there is a whole lot to read into that, but it is interesting nonetheless.

Ryan Hunter-Reay had a predictably uneventful afternoon. For his debut with Ed Carpenter Racing, it was decent. He was twenty-second quick, while Rinus VeeKay was twenty-sixth quick.

David Malukas was not the only Dale Coyne driver that had a good day. Sting Ray Robb finished the day fourteenth quick. Robb is in need of a good finish. Maybe he will get one this weekend.

That will do it for us today. Tonight is our night to eat at Majerle’s Black River Grill in Sheboygan for their Friday night fish fry. They are also famous for wildlife coming into their grounds to eat out of their many feeders. Multiple deer, fox and racoons are common sights in their backyard. It’s always good to get a table by a window.

Saturday’s practice will get underway tomorrow morning at 10:55 local time (CDT) and will be shown live on Peacock. Qualifying will start at 1:55 pm on Peacock. We will be here in the morning with an opening post. Susan will also have a post on some of the new improvements they have made here over the offseason.

I will close with a couple of very short videos from today – one from Turn Five and one of the cars coming out of the Carousel and headed into The Kink.

Please check back here in the morning!

George Phillips

This entry was posted on June 16, 2023 at 5:53 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.