Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Juri Vips in the No.30 MiJack Honda had an impressive start to his Laguna Seca weekend.
Vips ended Friday’s action on sixth place with a time of 01:07.9175s and speaking following the action he said:
“It was a good day and pretty good start to the weekend. We were in the same place as we were in testing yesterday. We were pretty solid right out of the box and were P3 when I did my fast time. We were competitive and I think the Mi-Jack car had more in it. I think the track changed a little bit compared to yesterday and I wasn’t quite fully committed so there is still time there. I was going to fully commit on the reds, which I didn’t get to run. We had a bit of a precautionary think from Honda’s side. They saw something on the data they didn’t like and wanted to take precautionary measures so we stopped on track.”
Graham Rahal in the No.15 iPacket Honda was seventh with a time of 01:07.9515s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
We were P7 (seventh) in Practice 1 and Juri was sixth so it was a solid day. On the first set of tires, I just had a massive amount of understeer which cost me pretty good. But we didn’t really get to run reds (alternate tires), which was probably the story for most guys since there were so many red flags. They just kept coming out, but I feel like the pace of the iPacket car is good. It’s going to be super-competitive which is why there are so many reds around here. With the pace that we are going, the level that is is, you are absolutely driving beyond 10-10ths on every single lap. Unfortunately, it’s causing a lot of guys, including myself yesterday, to make mistakes. We’ve just got to put our heads down and see what we get here over the next day or two. I think we’ll be solid though.
Christian Lundgaard in the No.45 Hy-Vee Honda had a disaster of a day in his own words as he ended the session in 25th place and speaking following the action he said:
Practice 1 was a bit of a disaster out there. On my first run I had a rock stuck between my suit and the seat so every left-hand corner wasn’t so pleasant on my right shoulder, so we stopped on our new tire set just to get that out. Then we went out and my first push lap I didn’t stop in the corkscrew so we went straight (off track) there. We never had a proper lap throughout the whole session. It was just a messy session. Tomorrow will be much better hopefully and we can get the Hy-Vee Honda up there on the timesheets.”