IndyCar: Sato tops opening Day at Indy

–by Mark Cipolloni–

Japanese veteran Takuma Sato led a Chip Ganassi Racing 1-2 in opening practice for the Indy 500 Wednesday after rain washed out Tuesday’s sessions.

With a tow, Sato turned a lap of 229.437mph to top his teammate Scott Dixon who was the only other driver over 229 mph.

None of today’s times mean anything whatsoever.  The engines are not yet turned up to qualifying boost levels, that comes Saturday morning,  and all the times were set with the help of a tow.

All 34 drivers entered turned laps today.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING (QUOTES)

Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:

“After the Open Test, I don’t think we were feeling too strong, so to roll out of the box here and after the first few laps in the car, I just got out and said hey, look, the car’s good. We just broke for lunch, went down for a couple of hours to get things sorted, but the raw speed of the car out of the box was phenomenal. To make two or three small changes, a couple of little aero or ride height things, you’re not looking at mind-blowing reinventing-the-wheel changes. By the time we were done, we went out with new tires and even passed some cars. We were just working on trying to follow closer, and the lap time was there. To be the fastest Chevy in the No. 14 is pretty cool. Start the month of May off, and we just have to carry the momentum.”

Talk about some of the passing and gains you feel like you made today…

“I’ve said this all year, and I feel Chevys have been really good on top-end. And I felt that not just on the ovals, but on the road courses as well. So, I think today to be in your fastest lap and then pass a car, and almost pass another into Turn 1, on the same second half of the track is pretty impressive and pretty stout. I feel really comfortable being in the Chevy for the top-end wise this year, especially in race trim. I’d like to see if we can obviously bring home the Borg Warner (trophy) for Chevy. That’d be pretty awesome and spectacular for our team.”

Ryan Hunter-Reay, No. 23 Chevrolet at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing:

“Today was a very productive day for us. We got through a lot of the checklist we hoped to. We lost a little bit yesterday with rainout. But the car has some good speed in it. We have some things to sort out tomorrow. I am cautiously optimistic with it. We are keeping our heads down and working hard. The track conditions were good today, not too hot. Track temperature got up a bit in the afternoon and the surface got greasy. It was beautiful day to be at the Speedway. We expect it to be much hotter and more difficult on race day. We are looking forward to Thursday’s action.”

Josef Newgarden, No. 2 Chevrolet at Team Penske:

“Felt really good in the No. 2 car. I think most of us here at Team Penske were really happy with the progress we made. It was a good, clean day all six hours which was welcome after yesterday’s rain. Feeling good, confident in the Shell car. Just need to keep it up. This weekend, we’re really going to find out where we’re at. A lot of work to do, but stay tuned with us.”

Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 Chevrolet at Team Penske:

“Awesome to get back on track in the Pennzoil Chevy. The yellow sub is always a crowd favorite, but yeah, really good day for us. We ticked a lot of boxes. Don’t know where we are speed-wise right now, but every time we wanted to do some speed, we managed to do a reasonable time. It feels nice. We’ll see what we’ve got for the rest of the week.”

Will Power, No. 12 Chevrolet at Team Penske:

“We got through a bunch of stuff early in the session, working on qualifying configurations. We felt really happy about that. We got three good race runs in after that and the Verizon Chevy was really good. It’s the first day and we have a lot more on our list to work through, but it’s hard to say this wasn’t a good first day here at Indy.”

Conor Daly, No. 20 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:

“Today was interesting and we worked through a lot of our list today. We got in over 120 laps today which is nice on the first day. We are decent in traffic which will come in handy on race day. Looking forward to getting back tomorrow and working some more.”

Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:

“Today was good, then it was bad and then it was good again. That is Indy for you. Overall, today was productive. We tried a lot of stuff on the No. 21 BITNILE.COM Chevrolet and at the end of the day we found the speed for traffic runs. Of course, being on top of the no-tow is always a plus.”

Ed Carpenter, No. 33 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:

“We had a pretty productive day. I would have liked to be up a little higher on the timesheet – just for egotistical reasons, but it felt productive. We worked through some things with our race trim that we wanted to investigate further after the Open Test. I am excited to get back to debrief and look through everything. There are thousands of configurations now with the new downforce options we have this year. We are a lot more competitive than what the big board says today.”

Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:

“Today was interesting and we worked through a lot of our list today. We got in over 120 laps today which is nice on the first day. We are decent in traffic which will come in handy on race day. Looking forward to getting back tomorrow and working some more.”

Felix Roseqvist, No. 6 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:

”It was good to get some actual runs in. They were mostly error runs in the beginning with a little race running in the end, but that was fun. I think we’re in a good window. We had some issues in the end; we couldn’t do a full run and we had to do a couple pit stops. I think we’re pretty much where we left off last year. It’s very tight. We want to catch the Ganassis, they were really strong last year and they continue to be strong. We have to bridge that gap, but otherwise, we feel really strong. I think we’re in the mix.”

Alexander Rossi, No. 7 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:

”It was a good day, lot of laps ran. We’re still learning, but a lot of positives to take from today, and we’re happy with where we are. We’ll just continue to work tomorrow.”

Tony Kanaan, No. 66 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:

”Good day for us, we did almost a hundred laps trying to make big changes, changes that take a lot of time to figure out, so from tomorrow on it’s just going to be tweaking the car. All in all, an awesome day for the No. 66 team. I think the whole team looked pretty strong, we did a lot of laps, and now on to tomorrow.”

Gavin Ward, Race Director at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:

“Strong first day running for the team. We’re focused on our own program here, a lot of race prep work. We’re pretty pleased with everything, got through a lot of tests today and we have a lot of data to chew through this evening. The drivers all seem reasonably comfortable for day one on track. Looking at the notes, we’re pretty happy where we sit. It’s always hard to judge around this place, but so far so good.”

Agustin Canapino, No. 78 Chevrolet at Juncos Hollinger Racing:

“We did some laps in a big pack. It was really, really good. Of course, it’s tough. It’s really difficult, but at the end of the day, I think we had a good first day for us.”

Stefan Wilson, No. 24 Chevrolet at Dreyer & Reinbold Racing:

“We finished day two of practice which was really day one after Tuesday’s rainout. It was a very solid day in the No. 24 Cusick Motorsports/CareKeepers Chevy. We just worked on race setup today and focused on the race car to make it better each time out. We tried things in traffic and found some things that worked well and some which didn’t work. We are now going through all of the data that was accumulated today. We are accessing some of the changes we made and see where we can improve. We’ll look at some of the things we want to try later in the week too. Overall, it was good first day for the team.”

RC Enerson, No. 50 Chevrolet at Abel Motorsports:

“We finally concluded day two, but day one got washed out on us. We finally got a chance to run ROP and went through that pretty flawlessly. Got to finally come our for our practice at the end of the day here. We’d come to the garage, and lost a bit of time there trying to get gears changed and all of that. But we finally got back out, got to see what our single car speed is like. Got to dabble a little bit in traffic, which I think that’s something that’s going to have to get more comfortable for me. Overall, a pretty productive day.”

Wednesday Practice Speeds