IndyCar: Friday Morning Report from Bommarito Automotive Group 500
Good morning from World Wide Technology Raceway in Madison, Illinois, for Round 13 of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES season. It is still cloudy after storms went through the area late last night, but today’s weather is predicted to be in the low 90s by 1 pm.
It will be interesting to see how the Saturday evening race plays out after watching the procession in Iowa, which was just a follow-the-leader event. No one wanted to make a pass on the track that had been altered in the corners for this year’s NASCAR Cup race.
Scott Dixon, Chip Ganassi Racing
Autoracing1 talked with Scott Dixon, who won this race last year on fuel strategy, about his thoughts on the racability this weekend.
“The biggest difference is balance and the added weight to the car. It’s over 100 pounds, mostly to the rear of the car. So change of setup and driveability are quite a bit. It’s a new tire. So it’ll be interesting just to see how that all plays out. But yeah, it’s the same for everybody.”
“The series has added downforce here, which should make Turns 3 and 4 a little bit better. I think a group of us were hoping that they would get to the 130 kPa on the boost, you know, bring the boost back down to, you know, what we run in the Indy 500 race, which I think would have made it a lot better for race abilities.”
“I don’t know if that decision is kind of a hard no right now. It could still be open.”
Will Power, Team Penske
Autoracing1 spoke with Will Power, who is second in the points championship. We asked what his thoughts on the race outcome would be.
” Man, like all these races are different. It depends where yellows fall, depends where you qualify. So, as you know, if you watch IndyCar, nothing is guaranteed. So you just have to be on top of the gallon. You’ll use your hybrid here. It’s actually worth some time because you got that very slow one, too, yeah, and you can regen because you’re lifting into Turns 1 and 2. More so than somewhere like Iowa. I think there’ll be a bit more tire wear here than in Iowa.”
“I think the strategies will get very mixed up and some people saving a lot of fuel, some are not. I think there’s some big changes we can make maybe next year to lower the power. Have a big push to pass softer tires, this sort of thing.”
Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing
The 2023 Series Champion, Alex Palou, has yet to win an oval race. The Spaniard is hungry to add this type of track to his career stats.
“It is going to be tough. We have an engine penalty, which doesn’t help to start. Didn’t test here. I mean, it is what it is. I am pumped that we need to go through and, yeah, looking for it.”
“Last year our car was really good. We didn’t test the new aero spec with the hybrid because we had our rookies test.”
“I think I’ve been improving different things every year, like this year, my speed in Iowa was a lot better than in the past. Racing, I cannot really say because we didn’t really have a lot of racing.”
“I think I was not missing only one thing in the past, I would say that I was missing being more competitive, a little faster, more confidence, and hopefully I got that. I had a lot more confident in Indy, a lot faster in Iowa. So hopefully here we can put everything together and see, but it’s tough. It’s tough to win Iowa. We finished second. We were leading. We were on the right strategy and got that yellow.”
“I mean, there’s nothing you can do there. So yeah, I think we just need to keep it going, out there, battling, and it will come, maybe this weekend.”
Here is the schedule for today in Central Time.
IndyCar Opening Practice 11:45 am
Qualifying 3:20 pm
High Line Practice 6:45 pm
Final Practice 7:30 pm
Lucille Dust reporting live from WWTR