Barber Wrap-up–Day One
It was a hot day in Alabama, both on the track and on the grounds. This past Tuesday morning in Nashville, it was 35°. Today in Leeds, Alabama just three days later; it was 85°. Welcome to spring in the south.
After a morning press conference where Josef Newgarden displayed some emotion over the events of the past week – he channeled that energy into leading the first practice, with a time of 1:06.7045. I predicted that the winner will come from Team Penske, and after today’s practice, I stand by that prediction. Will Power was third, with the Chevy-powered car of Pato O’Ward sandwiched in-between the two Penske cars. Penske driver Scott McLaughlin was ninth-quick.
The quickest Honda on the day was Colton Herta for Andretti Global. Christian Lundgaard for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing rounded out the Top-Five in his Honda.
Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Romain Grosjean was sixth quick, and Graham Rahal turned the seventh quickest time of the day. The fastest Chip Ganassi Racing driver? Marcus Armstrong, who was eighth-quick. Where was last week’s winner? Scott Dixon was twenty-first fastest on the day. What can we read into these times? Not much.
The two IndyCar newcomers, Théo Pourchaire for Arrow McLaren and Luca Ghiotto for Dale Coyne were twenty-fifth and twenty-seventh (last) respectively.
Rahal and Grosjean were brought into the media center for a post-practice press conference. Rahal left early to meet with his race engineers, but Grosjean seemed more than willing to stay as long as possible.
Once Rahal left, Grosjean sat and started reminiscing about how in 2010, he was one phone call away from going to DTM instead of Formula 2. The timing of one phone call made the difference of him giving F2 another go and eventually led to his long career in F1. He gave his opinions on how IndyCar is a fantastic series, yet no one knows about it. He expressed how a track like Barber has such a great family vibe and can help create new fans. On how to grow the series, he did not say anything we had not heard before, but it was good to hear a driver from F1 defend IndyCar and express what a good series he thought it was.
We had our one-on-one interview with Indy NXT driver Lindsay Brewer this afternoon. We met with Lindsay and her manager in the Juncos Hollinger Indy NXT transporter. If you know who she is, you many have a pre-conceived notion on who she is. I did, and I was dead-wrong. I came away with a very different opinion of her. Hopefully, I can covey here what she conveyed to Susan and me. It was one of the most candid and refreshing meeting I have had with a driver. I will try to post my article on our discussion with her either tomorrow or Sunday morning.
That’s going to do it for us today. Once again, Barber Motorsports Park lived up to expectations today. The weather promises to be like this all through the weekend. If so, it may be the first Barber weekend ever, to not be impacted by rain at some point of the weekend. Fingers crossed.
The IndyCar practice gets underway tomorrow at 12:25 pm EDT, and will be shown live on Peacock. We plan to be here at a decent hour. Please check back tomorrow morning.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
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