AJ Foyt Racing Team President Larry Foyt says the outfit is a little disappointed with how today’s qualifying went for Sunday’s 90-lap Children’s Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park. Speaking to Paddock Eye following the action, Foyt said:
We are a little disappointed with qualifying because like you said, we have a really good car and a good package. We tested here during the pre-season, and it did look pretty good. We just kind of caught traffic in qualifying, which is really easy to do here. It’s really nice, our road course package is pretty good and going into the Indy GP and hopefully, that translates and try and stay of trouble and maybe get a solid top ten which would be a really great result for us.
When asked by Paddock Eye if he feels a top ten is achievable, Foyt said that he does believe it can happen. It depends on what guys do in terms of a two or three-stop strategy and get it right, and Foyt believes you can jump a few guys if you have the pace.
As always in INDYCAR you got to see where the yellows fall. It has been pretty strange that we have had pretty clean street races. So, we kind of made some strategy decisions around more incidents but they just haven’t come. Barber, you never know, it could run green all day which is what we have had here before. The guys get their elbows out here on starts and restarts. Santino is pumped up and he likes the car. I think with Sting Ray he had a pretty solid day in Long Beach. He did whar we wanted which was a clean race. He has been getting uses to our systens and Chevrolet’s set up. I think he is getting used it more and more and here he made a good step forward in qualifying.
When asked if there is anything that the team can take from Barber to the Indy road course, Foyt said:
I think so, I think our baseline road course package now as we were quite a bit off here and the drivers didn’t like the car. We really weren’t that competitive but we did make some changes.
Foyt said that, in May, the expectations are very high, given their performance there last year. Many of the key players are in the same spot. Speaking about his qualifying, Santino Ferrucci commented saying:
“It’s hard when you come off the back foot from another weekend and you’re in the last pit stall as you have less time in qualifying because you’re the last car out. So, you normally lose about a minute,” he explained. “And we just ended up making it back [to the pit box] and by the time we were fueled and had a set strategy, we were on our fast laps when other people were coming out of the pits. We didn’t have enough fuel to cool down, re-gap and push one more lap. But we have a good car so we’ll move forward. We’ll definitely move forward.”
Sting Ray Robb starts the race from 25th place and speaking following the action he said:
“I think we did a good job. We made a good step forward,” said Robb, who posted a lap time of 1 minute, 6.8404 seconds (123.877mph). “We found something in the car that was not what we expected after practice 2, but after we made that change, it kind of woke the car up a little bit and I feel like it put us in a better window. I under-drove a little bit. So there’s still more on the table with my driving, but at least I know where it’s at now and I can feel what’s going on. So, I’m proud of the team. I think that we figured out a lot of issues and we know what direction to go for tomorrow for the race. I think we’ll roll off in the warmup with a pretty good setup and hopefully that correlates to a good race.”