Oilpressure

It’s hard to believe when we arrived at the track this morning, but we were actually wearing jackets, Granted, it was more rain-wear, but it was not terribly uncomfortable. That all changed when we went out for the 3:00 practice session. The 80° temps felt like 105°. You know what they say; it’s not the heat, but the humidity. After two days of downpours, when the sun finally came out it was sweltering.

Susan and I happened to be sitting behind Scott McLaughlin’s pit when practice ended. He immediately took his helmet off, went behind the pit stand with a drink and just sat for a while, motionless. He was ninth-quick on the day with a quickest time of 1:17.280, just a tenth of a second behind Romain Grosjean.

As usual, many drivers stayed put after putting in their installation lap. They simply are not allotted enough tires for a full 75-minute session, so they sit. Couple that with many drivers were content to let a few drivers finish drying the track, that was still very wet during the Indy NXT practice – and you had a lot of cars sitting on pit lane fifteen minutes into the session. I’ll bet the fans that came to watch Indy cars on track, were wondering what was going on. I got this shot of Will Power getting ready to go with about fifteen minutes gone in the session.

Perhaps waiting was good for Power, he ended the session with the fastest time of the day at 1:16.4042 – almost a full second over his teammate Scott McLaughlin.

I was able to get this shot of the other Team Penske driver; Nashville’s own Josef Newgarden. He was heading back into the pits when I took this. He was the slowest of the three Penske cars (thirteenth quick), but I never read a whole lot into Friday practice times.

Alex Palou was second-quick. He seemed kind of quiet, but I still think he will come away with the win on Sunday. The Ganassi cars are too strong at this track; although you couldn’t really tell by today’s speeds. Scott Dixon was tenth quick, followed by Marcus Armstrong at twelfth fastest. The 2021 winner of this event, Marcus Ericsson, was twenty-fifth quick.

Alexander Rossi, Pato O’Ward and Christian Lundgaard rounded out the Top-Five. Colton Herta was sixth fastest, followed by David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, McLaughlin and Dixon filled out the Top-Ten.

I went to the head of pit lane and shot this short video of cars coming out of the pits, merging with cars coming down the straightaway. It was a very busy place. I’m surprised there has not been an issue with this traffic flow over the past couple of years.

After practice, David Malukas was brought into the media center. He had some interesting comments regarding his future. He would not name names, but he said once things started to fall, they had a couple of options where they might go. Someone reading between the lines might interpret his comments as alluding to one option being HMD motorsports as a stand-alone team – but I’d be surprised if that happened next season.

That’s going to do it for us today. While others in the media center were making dinner plans, we are headed home. That sounds very inviting right now. I think the heat got the best of MrsOilpressure today. She said she might sit at home tomorrow, so she can rest up for Sunday. Hopefully she’ll catch her second wind and join me tomorrow. But that heat was brutal. I don’t want her to overdo it tomorrow. I’d rather have her for the race on Sunday.

Regardless, I’ll be here tomorrow and Susan may be as well. Practice will be at 10:40 am local time (11:40 EDT on Peacock), then Qualifying will take place at 1:45 pm local time (2:45 on Peacock). Please check back tomorrow morning.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on August 4, 2023 at 5:56 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.