Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Ericsson in the No.8 Huski Chocolate Honda scored the best street course qualifying result of his career to date as the defending Indianapolis 500 winner will roll off from fourth place in Sunday’s 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season-opening FIrestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg presented by RP Funding after a qualifying time of 01:00.4435s and speaking following the session the Swede said:
“I’m really happy with our results and our performance. I think it shows all the hard work we put in this offseason as a team. For myself, I’ve been focusing a lot on qualifying, trying to be better there and improve our qualifying form and this is a great start to that and to the season. I’m really happy, grateful and looking forward to the race tomorrow.”
Scott Dixon in the No.9 PNC Bank Honda had a tricky start to his qualifying preparation as he crashed heavily in practice this morning and will start Sunday’s race from ninth place, having set a time of 59.8010s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“Definitely interesting day today, crashing in practice this morning. Not too much damage which was great to get the car fixed. Went into qualifying with a few unknowns. We were the quickest in Q1, looking good in Q2, then we had a big balance shift on the last set of tires and just had a lot of understeer. We missed by a few hundredths and frustrating as we’ll start ninth. The PNC Bank No. 9 is definitely a lot quicker than that. It’s been one of the those weekends where we miss by a little bit when it counted the most.”
Alex Palou in the No.10 The American Legion Honda starts the race from seventh place with a time of 59.7781s and speaking following the action he said:
“It was a shame that we qualified so close to advancing to the Fast 6, but the No. 10 The American Legion car was great. It was great yesterday and now today, so we’ll make a few tweaks tomorrow in the warm-up to try to get the win in the race.”
Marcus Armstrong in the No.11 Ridgeline Lubricants Honda starts his first race in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES race from P13 with a time of 01:00.3158s and speaking following the action he said:
“Qualifying done and dusted; A little bit earlier than I would have liked. But it was close. Probably not the best scenario for us with the red flag at the end with us not getting out there to do another lap. But the No. 11 Ridgeline Lubricants was really good; It’s just the fine margins.”