Colton Herta in the No.26 Gainbeidge Andretti Autosport Honda will start today’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville from third place on the grid. Speaking following qualifying, the Californian who now calls Nashville home commented saying:
“I’m happy with how we ended up. I think that’s as close, or as good as, we were going to get. We might have been able to get Pato (O’Ward), but we didn’t have it for P1. Not this time. P3 is a great spot to start, it’s close to the front and we are within striking distance of a win from there. We have a great car. The Gainbridge Honda has been awesome all weekend. We have a few tweaks tonight to make it a little bit better and then go for the win tomorrow.”
Kyle Kirkwood in the No.27 AutoNation Honda starts today’s race from the eighth place, having made it into the second part of qualifying and speaking following the action; he commented saying:
“It was a good qualifying effort from the AutoNation team. We were definitely in contention for a pole day, but the red flag caught us out. That’s a disappointment, but it’s part of it on street courses. It’s a give and take – you either wait and risk it and get in that perfect lap, or you go out early and still risk it because you could be beat later by everyone. It’s disappointing, but eighth is okay, we’re happy with that too.”
Romain Grosjean in the No.28 DHL Honda starts the race from sixth place and is his third top-six start position in Nashville speaking following the action, he commented saying:
“We qualified sixth, it’s good to have another trip to the Firestone Fast 6. We tried blacks for our first run and then switched the alternate tire and made a mistake on that run. But I think we have a good car for tomorrow so I’m excited for the race.”
Devlin DeFrancesco did not advance in qualifying and starts the race from 26th place and speaking following the action he commented saying
“Overall, we didn’t have a ton of track time heading into qualifying, and it was a tough session with all four teammates in Group 2. I’m not really sure what happened, we struggled to roll any sort of minimum speed. It really does hurt; but we know anything can happen in the race. I think the blacks will be the preferred tire, so we’ll do what we can to work our way up.”