Oilpressure

Alex Palou will pace the field to the green flag for the Sonsio Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon. Palou put down a lap of 1:09.0004, which was almost a second faster than Christian Lundgaard – who will share the front-row with Palou. This was after Palou ended up in the grass just a few laps earlier.

Most of the crowd that was on-hand and many of the drivers thought Will Power was going to win the pole. He seemed to have the most consistently fast car throughout qualifying. Even Christian Lundgaard thought that Power was going to end up on pole. Instead, Power will start third. Josef Newgarden, Pato O’ Ward and Scott Dixon rounded out the Firestone Fast Six.

The two front-row drivers and Newgarden were brought into the media center. Newgarden was asked for his thoughts when he heard that his race strategist, Tim Cindric, would not be on the stand for the Sonsio Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500. He minimized it by saying their team was so deep, you could plug any team member in there and not lose much. Hmmm….

It was a good crowd for a Friday afternoon. The weather was cool all day, which made thins very pleasant. When the sun tucked behind the clouds, it was down-right chilly. I’m not complaining. because next week will probably be twenty-degrees warmer. We were in the pits for both groups of Round One, but we moved into the Tower Terrace stands for Rounds Two and Three. The view was much better and it was nice to sit in the sun and take it all in. We took the obligatory selfie, while in the stands.

On a personal note, Susan is doing so much better this year than last. Last year, she had to stop a couple of times and rest on her way to the garage area. Not so today. we walked to the garage area, walked all through there, and then walked back to the media center. In that time, we ran into several people and stopped and chatted. She never had to sit down and rest. Her stamina level seems to be almost back to where it was before she got sick. It appears this will be a very good Month of May for us.

We are going to dine at Dawson’s tonight, and then go to check into our hotel. Since we got up so early, I want to sleep in. We will be here before the morning warm-up at 11:15 am EDT, which will air live on Peacock. Then the race broadcast will begin at 3:00 pm EDT on Big NBC, with the green flag around 3:40.

I’ll close Friday’s wrap-up with some of Susan’s photos from the day. Thanks for following along today, and please check back tomorrow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on May 10, 2024 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Indianapolis 500. 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.