Chevrolet says that they won’t know whether or not they have solved their plenum events that affected half a dozen of their entries on Saturday until they get back on track for Fast 12 practice and qualifying later today the Bow-Tie confirmed to Paddock Eye at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Speaking at a press conference at IMS on Saturday evening, GM’s VP of Performance and Motorsports Jim Campbell said:
First of all, it’s always great to be at Indianapolis. This is what we look forward to all year long. We’re here at Indy for qualifying. It’s one of the most special weekends of the year in terms of all motorsports. One of the toughest, as well. As a manufacturer I will tell you we are pushing as hard as we can to give our drivers and teams the most horsepower and performance that we can possibly give them because that’s what you do at Indy. So we’re pressing hard, and you can see obviously we’re using the Indy 500 spec 1.5 bar. There’s been no testing at 1.5 bar with the exception of some time on Friday, no testing prior to that at 1.5 bar. This is a weekend where you put the higher boost levels in and you’ve got to go.
What I would say is when you look at the Fast 12, super proud that nine of the top 12 are Chevrolets, representing five of our six teams.
We’re excited about that and what that can mean for tomorrow and going on to the Indy 500.
As I said, we’re pushing as hard as we can, and we had about five plenum events, on the 78, the 33, the 24, the 20, the 5 and the 17. What is that, six? And so the good news is the engines, no harm to the engines. Engines are strong and great. So that’s good. We do — obviously have put those drivers at a deficit when they’ve been trying to make their fast four laps.
Nine drivers in Fast 12, including all three Penske drivers, have Chevrolet power. We will just have to wait and see what happens this afternoon.