Photo Credit: Shawn Gritzmacher
Townsend Bell, driver of the No. 29 California Kitchen Pizza Honda, was second fastest in practice four for the 100th Running of the Indianapolis 500 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He had a speed of 227.593.
“Yeah, obviously had a nice tow this morning, but worked a lot on race setup all day and made a lot of gains,” Bell said. “Really proud of my team of guys that have come together to support this fifth car one-off entry with Andretti, and also really thankful to be part of a five-car program where there’s so much information to learn and reanalyze what I do and all of that. Also the chance to run with them in traffic repeatedly is, I think, helping me a lot.”
Bell is not a full-time driver in the IndyCar Series as he is normally in the booth calling races; however he usually always runs the Indy 500. When the green flag drops on May 29 it will be Bell’s tenth Indy 500 start.
“Yeah, I think so. Everything feels very familiar, so new engineers, first time working with Craig Hampson, he’s been just terrific, and Jeff Grunds (ph), my crew chief,” Bell said. “The car has been just meticulously presented every day. The guys haven’t made any mistakes, and they’re very methodical with the preparation of the car, and that just gives you a lot of confidence knowing that you’ve got really solid, experienced people that are making sure that you’ve got the best thing that they can give you.”
Bell and his Andretti Autosport teammate Carlos Munoz, who was third in practice, ran almost the same speed. Munoz was just a tenth off of Bell.
“I don’t know, actually,” Bell said. ” I’d have to look just for where they ended up. We did a long run towards the end of the day with Carlos, as well. I know there’s some fundamental differences, but a lot of that is kind of just driver feel, I think, at this point. I’ve learned some things that Carlos tried early on Monday and yesterday that I tried and liked. I tried some things Ryan tried. Those guys have tried some things I’ve tried. So I tend to think we’re all kind of migrating to something similar, so that’s been really helpful. That’s huge to have that amount of information.”
It has been a year since Bell has been behind the wheel of an IndyCar and there have been some significant changes to them since then.
“Not at all,” Bell said. “I just watched like everybody did when Spencer unfortunately had his issue, which I understand was a cut tire. It’s really unfortunate when you’re a rookie to have that. I feel bad for him. But certainly it looked different than crashes we’ve seen previous in the last few years of a similar nature, 180 in Turn 1, and the moment it went backwards, you could just tell that the car was on the ground the whole time.
“I actually think it might slow down better if it goes in the air just because it’s like an envelope flying off the roof of a car, but I think it’s probably a good idea that we stay on the ground.”
One of the changes made to the car was the domed skids. With them, the drivers and crews have to raise the height of their cars up higher.
“Yeah, I think that part of it clearly makes the setup maybe a little more challenging and the driving maybe a little trickier,” Bell said. “I think that maybe the setup window is a little narrower if you’re running higher, at least that’s kind of what it feels like to me out there, but it’s subtle. It’s not like it’s way higher. But again, I think the Andretti team has done a good job to come prepared, as has Honda. I think I’m in the television media a good part of the year, and it’s almost weird because two months ago it was all about, oh, my gosh, Chevy is just dominating, and Honda, you know, has just done a phenomenal job to keep their heads down, keep working, and they’ve come here very well-prepared, and I’m super proud to be in one of their cars. It’s been neat.
“I told somebody earlier, you know, for as long as I’ve watched the television, which is since I was probably five, Honda has always won. You know, they’ve won in Supercross when I was a kid. They’ve won in Moto GP. They’ve won in Formula 1. So in the back of my head, even back when things might not look so good at the beginning of the season, I just knew that they would come back, especially for this race, with a strong program.”
