Photo Credit: Joe Skibinski/IndyCar
Getting prepared for the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 at the historic Indianapolis Motor Speedway Charlie Kimball, driver of the No. 42 Tresiba Chevrolet, was fourth on the fourth day of practice. He was the fastest Chevrolet with a speed of 227.477 mph.
The Camarillo, California native usually drives the No 83 Chevrolet for the team, but was announced earlier this month for the Indy 500 his number would switch to the No. 42 through a promotion with his sponsor.
“Yeah, I think we’re pretty good,” he said. “The 42 has been decent. It’s kind of weird saying the 42 rather than the 83, but the 42 has been pretty good in traffic, and we worked a lot on the race car today.”
Weather can be a definite factor with the race car and change the way the car handles.
“I think at the moment it’s pretty tough,” he said. “The conditions were fairly good. The weather was nice, the wind not terrible, but I think we’re fighting from a little bit of a hole here.”
On Friday the cars will have the boost added to get ready for qualifying weekend.
“But at the moment, we’re focused kind of from today moving forward into tomorrow to see what we get when the boost level changes, at least for qualifying, because it is a whole different package,” he said. “We did a little bit of qualifying work at the end of the day, and that was enough. So we’ll focus on that tomorrow.
“But we spent a lot of time earlier in the day working in the packs, working in traffic, and pretty happy with it. Like we tried something that just didn’t work, and we tried to work with it and tried to work with it, and then went back, and it’s like, all right we’re back on solid footing here.”
Kimball has three teammates at Chip Ganassi Racing with Scott Dixon, Tony Kanaan and Max Chilton he can bounce ideas on what the car might be doing in practice from each other.
“I think everybody at Chip Ganassi Racing, we’re sharing data,” he said. “We’re learning a lot kind of following each others leads when they’re promising, and learning from each others mistakes, as well.
“That’s the greatest thing about having four cars like that that are solid, and Max is doing a great job, and then Scott and Tony are always forces to be reckoned with around here.”
