Dale Coyne Racing’s Nolan Siegel in the No.51 King Taco Honda made his full points-paying NTT INDYCAR SERIES race debut at the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on Sunday. Siegel started the race from 27th place and made steady progress throughout the 85-lap race coming home in 20th place and speaking following the action he said:
“My first full length standard IndyCar race is done. It was a long one, the guys did a great job. The car was much better in the race than I think it has been all weekend so props to the team for making that improvement. We had good stops, it went smoothly. We picked up seven spots and our pace seemed pretty strong. It’s really hard to pass around here. I feel good and overall, I’m happy with the day. Huge thank you to everyone that’s helped me along the way and this weekend and let’s see if we can do better in Indy.”
Jack Harvey in the No.18 INVST Honda started the race from 23rd place and came home in 25th having been caught up in an accident that saw Christian Rasmussen retire from from the race and speaking following the action he said:
“In the first part of the race, we moved up a couple spots and then Rasmussen spun in front of me and I had nowhere to go. He hit me as he was spinning back down the track and it damaged the floor, and the sidepod and I lost a ton of downforce and grip because of that and that was pretty much the race. I think the positives from the weekend are that we were better today than we were yesterday. I think we moved the car along so hopefully we can continue that little bit of momentum that we built there. Obviously, it didn’t show in the race unfortunately, but if we can start progressing in the weekend like we did from yesterday to today then I think we’ll start seeing some real progress for Dale Coyne Racing.”