INDYCAR rookie Louis Foster in the No.45 Mijack Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda was delighted with his qualifying effort for Sunday’s Thermal Club Grand Prix.
Foster starts the race from tenth and speaking following the action he said:
The team has done an amazing job. They have brought me up to speed really fast. The 45 car rolled off the truck super-fast. It’s just kind of been building each session. Getting into the Fast Six would have been difficult because we didn’t have new alternate tires; we used two sets of new tires in the first round but the time that I did do in the first round would have put me in the Fast Six so we just had a discussion about saving a set in the future when we think we’re going to be strong. I’m super happy. It’s been an amazing weekend so far and hopefully we can make it past Turn 3 on the start this weekend.”
Graham Rahal in the No.15 Mobil 1 RLL Honda starts the race from 18th and speaking after losing around 2 tenths he said:
“I dropped a wheel at the exit of Turn 6 which probably cost me about two-and-one half-tenths (of a second) total. I should have just advanced – P6 – I wasn’t quite as fast as Louis. Maybe a quarter to one-half a tenth off of Louis, but just barely enough to advance. But we didn’t and I’m frustrated to miss it by that little, particularly when the time was clearly there and I didn’t feel like I really made an error. I just touched the curb like I normally do but what happened is the car, because of being on the softer red tires kind of bottomed out and when it bottomed out, it pulled me. But you’ve got to go in qualifying. The tires dictate your run and that (bottoming) turned the hybrid off so all down the back straight I had no hybrid boost and that was two-ish tenths (of a second.”
Devlin DeFrancesco in the No.30 MiJack Honda starts the race from 26th and speaking following the action he said:
We rolled off quite strong in Practice 2 this morning and I thought we were in a good window going into qualifying, but we put the alternate tires on and it just wasn’t there. We seemed to have a lot of understeer, right through the range of low, medium and high speed and it was a big struggle. The No. 30 Mi-Jack crew will look through the data, work hard overnight and see what we can do tomorrow.”