Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
Team Penske’s dominance and speed in IndyCar continues as after taking the top-two spots on Friday afternoon. Though while it was Helio Castroneves and Will Power on Friday, the spotlight shined on different driver in the organization on Saturday.
Simon Pagenaud would top the session with a lap of 19.2884 seconds.
“It’s been good,” he said.” We’ve been working on the Hewlett Packard Enterprise car pretty well. We’ve been doing race stuff all day and the times have improved so I feel very comfortable in every condition now. We managed to get a snapshot of what qualifying would be like this time of the day. The car was fast. So far so good. Chevrolet has done a great job with the aero package and the engine, so we are just scratching the surface, but so far it’s gone pretty good.”
Ed Carpenter Racing continued to show speed with their drivers Josef Newgarden and Ed Carpenter taking the next two spots on the chart, followed by Tony Kanaan and Will Power.
“It’s got characteristics of Iowa and Milwaukee to me,” Newgarden sounded off. “I think it’s a little easier than Iowa, but it’s still damned tough. I’m not trying to make it sound easy, it’s not, it’s really difficult. But maybe just a little — it’s different than Iowa. Iowa you sustain the loading for longer than here. You know, there’s — I think you reach about the same peak loading as Iowa in Turns 1 and 2, but it’s more crimped and you get in and out of it quicker so it’s not as sustained, and 3 and 4 is more open than Iowa and not quite as banked.”
Marco Andretti, whom led the Friday night session, was sixth quickest, followed by Scott Dixon, Juan Pablo Montoya, Graham and Charlie Kimball.
