Photo Credit: Chris Owens/IndyCar
Josef Newgarden, driver of the No. 21 Preferred Freezer Chevrolet, qualified well for the Angies List Grand Prix of Indianapolis. He advanced from his group in round one to round two where he advanced to the Fast Six. However, during the post qualification inspection Newgarden’s car was found to be underweight so the team was penalized and will have to start the GP of Indy from the rear of the field.
Before the qualification, though, Newgarden mentioned it’s always nice to make the Firestone Fast Six.
“It was a little surprise to us,” he said. “Not that I don’t have supreme confidence in what we can do. It’s just this has been a tough place for us. It’s kind of a unique track to find speed. You think it would be straightforward. It’s very smooth, not bumpy, it’s fast. There’s nothing super crazy about the place that you would say, That corner has to be just a nightmare to figure out. It’s fast, a very difficult track because of the high speed, low downforce, big brake zone.
“It’s just been tough for us to find speed around here the last couple years. I think we made a good step this weekend. I feel like we’re already much better than we’ve been the last couple years. That’s positive. Being inside the Fast Six only helps going into race day tomorrow, trying to stay out of trouble, have a clean race. Hopefully we can make it through turn one, that’s going to be the hotspot. Hopefully we don’t have a car that goes off very hard, race up front, take on Pagenaud who has been on a tear lately.”
For drivers who have technical skill, it comes in handy at the road course at Indianapolis Motor Speedway because the track has character and that helps the drivers with their car condition.
“It’s when you don’t know what you need to find that it becomes difficult to find speed,” Newgarden added “I think we know what we’re looking for. I know what I want from the car. Sometimes you can know what you want, it’s difficult to find it still. Some other places, you can get rewarded a little bit more with bravery. Maybe you have a fast uphill or downhill corner, you can make a little bit more of a difference.
“You can still do that here, but the car really has to be precise. It’s kind of like the Indianapolis 500 to some regard. You got to polish the racecar as much as possible. It’s got to be perfect. That’s kind of why we have so much practice going into the 500. You got to make that car perfect for the race. I feel like it’s kind of like that, too, here on the road course. Nothing I can really do to manipulate it much more. We have to be good about our setup changes and what we are doing on the car.”
It is a little colder for this time of year then it has been previous years. The weather can play a big factor into how the cars run on track and how the track is on the tires.
“I’ll say this,” Newgarden replied. “It certainly doesn’t take Penske any time to bring up their tires. Holy crap. You watch Power and Pagenaud, they’re like boom. They’re like in. It seems like first lap they’re dropping time. For us that’s been more of a struggle.
“I think it’s affected the balance more, to be honest. The balance has been jumping all over the place. When we started yesterday, I had one balance in the morning. When we got to the afternoon, I had a totally different balance. Got kind of loose in the afternoon.
“This morning again I felt like the car kind of hunkered down at the rear. I think it helped rear grip more than anything for me. The Fast Six, I think the balance shifted again towards the afternoon, started to change.
“I don’t know about bringing up the tires. I didn’t notice a big difference with that. But I think the balance has been kind of all over the place, trying to figure out what you want from the car between the morning and the afternoon.”
The road course at IMS is very different then any other road courses the IndyCar Series races on. For that reason, Firestone has to bring different tires to the track for the drivers to use during the race.
“I would agree,” Newgarden added. “I think Firestone, they’re very consistent. For us, me, this being my fifth year, I think we’ve noticed a very consistent trend on where the tires go. This tire to me has acted very standard for the road course tire that we’ve run. That’s thanks to Firestone. They make our job a little bit easier with that stuff. Just got to follow the trends.”
