It was an extremely busy day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for Chevrolet on Thursday as their NTT INDYCAR SERIES teams prepare for Fast Friday later today.
Team Penske’s Will Power and Ed Carpenter Racing’s Conor Daly led the Chevrolet drivers with defending champion Power fourth overall while Daly was 6th.
Arrow McLaren who will run a fourth car at the Indy 500 next season were joined by Kyle Larson of Hendrick Motorsports who commented saying:
“Checking out a practice day here. Getting excited about next year’s Indy 500. Really just came here today to hang out around the Arrow McLaren team to just soak up any little bit of anything to prepare myself for whenever I get behind the wheel of an Indy car. It’s been pretty neat. I’ve been here a couple of times once to hang out, I came here for the race in 2013, but never this close to the action. It’s been neat. I think the more I can soak up, the less surprises I’ll have next year. Happy to be here, happy for the opportunity. I’m excited about the opportunity. It’s still so far away that I haven’t spent that much time preparing yet, but I look forward to the preparation to be ready and competitive. Hopefully, we have a good run next year. We’ll see. It’s been cool hanging out here today. Arrow McLaren has amazing hospitality, great people. Looking forward to next year.”
Will Power, No. 12 Chevrolet at Team Penske:
“A small issue to start the day. We had something going on with our telemetry but once we diagnosed and fixed it, it was a good day for the Verizon 5G Chevy team. We seem to be in a good position for qualifying, but tomorrow will be the true test when we get the boost increase. Qualifying up front is important in the 500, but you can win from several rows back. That’s not where we hope to be, but we have single-car speed and the No. 12 Chevy was racy in the pack.”
Conor Daly, No. 20 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:
“Today was a good day. We had the chance to get good no-tow runs in, but know we can trim more and be even faster. The car was even great in traffic so I feel strong and that is a nice feeling.”
Josef Newgarden, No. 2 Chevrolet at Team Penske:
“My second full day and the typical up and down. It changes every day with the conditions but got a lot of good running in with the with the Shell car . Feeling really good with Team Chevy, and what we’re building towards this weekend. Qualifying — that’s going to be most important right now. There is speed in the car and hopefully stay up front. We get through that and we can worry about the race as well.”
Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 Chevrolet at Team Penske:
“I feel good. The Pennzoil Chevy is fast on no-tow and and race running. So it looks good. We get to up the boost t tomorrow so we will see we’ve got. But overall pretty good day. We got through everything what we needed to do today and I feel like we’re in a good spot.”
Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:
”It was a tough day for us, to be honest. We’re definitely not in the spot where we want to be yet, but we’re working at it. We’ve got a plan to go through after qualifying this weekend. Tomorrow, it’s obviously a very different goal: to go as fast as you can by yourself. Boost is up, so we’re going to get everything prepared for that.”
Felix Roseqvist, No. 6 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:
”It was a very productive day. I think we did around 150 laps, so we got a lot of data – some good reads, some bad reads – but we were way more clever today than we were yesterday. Now we switch focus to going fast with Fast Friday, so we will turn up the boost. I think we’re in the game. There are a lot of strong cars out there so it is going to be tight like always, probably even tighter than last year, but our cars are definitely not bad. We just need to stay with it for the month.”
Alexander Rossi, No. 7 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:
“It was a good day. More progress was made from the whole team. I’m getting happier and happier with the car each time we go out, which is great. I think we’re in a pretty good spot for the group running. There are some small tweaks to come, but now the focus turns to qualifying – one of the most fun parts of the year.”
Tony Kanaan, No. 66 Chevrolet at Arrow McLaren INDYCAR:
”All in all a good day. We worked on race stuff all day long. We made big changes, so I think the team is happy. Now we go back and get ready for qualifying. We had to stop a little early because we want to be ready for tomorrow. There’s a little bit of a chance of rain in the afternoon, so we want to be ready to go right at noon. I’m happy.”
Rinus VeeKay, No. 21 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:
“I am very happy today. It may not look like it in charts, but we are fast. The car feels really, really good to drive. We made progress all day and the BITNILE.COM crew has made all the right changes. We have everything that we have, now we will trim it out for tomorrow. It is always the best when you are driving an ECR car here at IMS.”
Ed Carpenter, No. 33 Chevrolet at Ed Carpenter Racing:
“Today was a good and productive day. It is funny – I feel better about the car today than yesterday, but we are deeper in the time sheet today. That doesn’t really matter when we accomplished everything we wanted to today. I still have a couple questions on what the right thing ultimately is, but we worked well as a group together. We will go fast tomorrow.”
Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:
“Solid day today. P3 in the no-tow, P11 overall. I’m really happy with that and continuing to progress. Got some pace, and looking forward to Fast Friday.”
Benjamin Pedersen, No. 55 Chevrolet at AJ Foyt Racing:
“Very good day. It’s starting to get fun with doing some qualifying runs. Most of the morning was race runs. This afternoon, we started doing some qual runs, and we’ve got very good speed. We’ve been pretty conservative still with our current level, and we’re pretty competitive even with that. Looking forward to getting a little more aggressive with it.”
The teams will turn up the boost later today for the final major practice ahead of this weekend’s qualifying for the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500 presented by Gainbridge.