Defending NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Will Power, driver of the No.12 Verizon 5G Team Penske Chevrolet says that he believes that the car will be good out of the box as the sport heads to Iowa Speedway this weekend. The Australian has yet to win in Iowa but is hoping that the team will be competitive over the course of the only double-header race weekend of the 2023 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season.
Speaking to Paddock Eye about the car coming off the truck when they get to Iowa, Power said:
Yes, you’ve got to try to balance qualifying versus getting race work done in that one practice we have. Pretty important to roll off the truck in a good spot, which I can’t see why we wouldn’t.
Yeah, that’s the advantage of testing. You’re going to turn up and just go straight out of the box and do a quality run on a new set, whereas we’re going to waste a set of tires just getting up to speed. And you need your tires because you’re limited because you’ve got two races.
Yeah, that’s — yeah, that’s the disadvantage of not testing, but I expect the car to be good out of the box.
Power heads into this weekend’s race in eighth place in the series standings on 242 points, 175 behind runaway championship leader Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing who, Power says is going to be extremely difficult to catch. Power made the point that Palou who not turn up for the next couple of races and still hold a large championship lead.
The Australian has not scored eighter a race win or NTT P1 Award in 2023, something that Power will be hoping to rectify this weekend with the double-header in Iowa.. There will be 28 cars on track this weekend meaning that on the short track oval in Iowa traffic could be tricky, however, speaking to Paddock Eye about that very topic, Power said:
I think it will be similar to the way it’s been because it’s a two-lane track. It’s almost a 2 1/2-lane track. I think it will be your normal — if you’ve got two cars running side by side, you really can’t do anything. You’ve just got to sit there. As soon as there’s another lane, it’s sort of single file, you can motor through traffic.
That is the advantage of starting up front is the fact that you’ve just been running in clean air and not degrading tires. There’s so much more grip to be out front in the clear. So when you get to that traffic, they’ve been running the heaviest traffic at the very back so their tires have degraded significantly more. And the fact that they’re at the back is usually they haven’t got as good of a car unless something happened in qualifying.
Yeah, so you get to the first few pretty easy. Obviously the further up you get, the harder it gets. Yeah, that’s the challenge of that place. You’ve got to work the traffic well while covering the guy behind you who’s attacking you. Yeah, good fun. Very, very good fun race and track.