Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports David Malukas in the No.18 HMD Motorsports Honda started today’s Gallagher Grand Prix of Indianapolis on the IMS road course in 27th place and made up 11 spots over the course of the 85-lap race to finish the race in 16th place and speaking following the race he said:
“We started 27th and finished 16th and I’m happy with that. It was a really good race for us from a strategy perspective and with the car that we had. I think we managed to gain a lot of positions on drivers that had a better car than us so that was encouraging. In the end, with fuel saving and all that it was a tough race, but we were able to gain 11 positions along the way and the whole team can be happy with the end result today.”
Sting Ray Robb moved up from his 23rd place on the starting grid to 18th after the first lap. With cars on different pit stop strategies, he moved up as high as third before making his first pit stop on Lap 26. Once pit stops had cycled through Robb found himself in 23rd position. He pit once more on Lap 39, once again returning to 23rd, and he made his final stop on Lap 62. The rookie picked up one more position on Lap 69 and went on to cross the finish line in 22nd place.
Speaking following the race, Robb said:
“Other than the first few laps, we had an all-green race today, which made it tough. We moved up a few spots on the starts, which is good and we stayed clean which was important. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to hold on to the spots we gained, but 22nd is not too bad at the end of it all. It was a long day out there, but glad we got it done.”