Arrow McLaren Race Director Gavin Ward says that it was not the day they were looking for in Sunday’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville. Speaking following the race, he commented saying:
Obviously, not the day we were hoping for today with two cars that got caught up in incidents. Pato did well to bring it home, but the race really started to fall apart for him when he couldn’t make the Firestone Reds last on that first stint. I was a little bit surprised on how difficult it was to get a stint like that out of those tires, but that’s part of the game.
“It’s a process; we’ll learn from it and get better. It was a tough day. You have to stay positive. With a stretch like this, it’s about the long game and we’ll keep playing it.”
Pato O’Ward in the No.5 Arrow McLaren started the race from second place and fell down the order and finished the race in eighth place following the race he commented saying:
“It was a tough day in Nashville. I think we were too late in taking our first pit stop; we lost a lot of time there. It’s pretty much a track position race. It’s tough to pass, especially when you have fuel numbers and you can’t really use the push to pass. I’m bummed we went backwards. We’ll collect and try to have a good Indy road course, just look forward to what’s next.”
Alexander Rossi started the race from tenth place and came home in 19th place and speaking following the action he commented saying:
”The good thing is for the first weekend really since Detroit, I had a good race car in the race, so we definitely found a direction, which is what we were really hoping to get coming into this weekend. That’s the positive. There was a bit of a mess out there with Veekay, and then I made a mistake a lap later, brushed the wall, and that kind of ended our day. I’m bummed for the team. That was one of the better cars that we had in quite some time, and we didn’t get anything out of it. We’ll take the good parts from today and move on to Indy next week.”
Felix Rosenqvist started the race in 14th place and came home in 22nd place and speaking following the action he commented saying:
”Tough weekend overall. There was some hope there after qualifying. I thought we had a bit better car than what showed. In the race, I was struggling a lot with straightline speed and with pace. We were able to follow but couldn’t really get by anyone. I got stuck on the outside in that last restart and hit the marbles. It was like going on ice; the tarmac was kind of breaking up at that point. It was a disappointing weekend. We really didn’t have any positives in the race. We tried to gamble on a strategy, but it didn’t work out. It is a weekend to forget for us.”