Ed Carpenter Racing’s Conor Daly in the No.20 Bitnile Chevrolet says that he and teammate Rinus VeeKay will work together as a team in today’s 100-lap NTT INDYCAR SERIES season-opening Firestone Grand Prix of St Petersburg presented by RP Funding to try and move forward following a very challenging qualifying for the team.
Daly, who starts today’s race from 26th place, commented following the qualifying action saying:
“The car, I thought, for sure we’ve made a step forward on the balance compared to last year, but everyone’s working to be better themselves. We just needed a little bit more out of it. The balance is quite good. But yeah just the race because this race is crazy. But just thank everyone a bit now about calm for being here and supporting us. We’ll see what happens. It’s his race is a wild one on the bright side. I got my boy Rinus right in front of me. We’ll both work together as a team and we’ll try to get forward to go get them tomorrow.”
Rinus VeeKay in the No.21 Bitnile Chevrolet starts the race from 24th place and speaking following his session he commented saying:
“Tough one. Pretty annoyed, angry. We had a fast car. We had a Fast Six car definitely. I was on my lap and starting the second lap, which is still a good lap on tires, and there were a bunch of cars standing still in Turn 10. Got hindered there. That was it. That was going to be a pretty good lap, the lap after was probably going to be better. We have a fast car. I think tomorrow, if anything positive, this makes decisions easier on strategy. We have some different ways to go, we’ll just give it our all. We had a tough race, but still finished sixth. With the pace we have, I think we’re better than last year. We can definitely move up fast and do very well.”
The Ed Carpenter Racing duo will join the rest of the NTT INDYCAR SERIES field for a final warmup session from 9AM ET where they will get a final chance to get their race setup dialled in.