O’Ward Aiming For The Podium From Fourth

Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward in the No.5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet is aiming for the podium today at Barber Motorsports Park as he starts the Children’s Grand Prix of Alabama presented by AmFirst from fourth.

We definitely squeezed out a lot of what the car had in it today. We’ll be starting second row, P4, so I think we’ll be looking good for a strong race tomorrow. We’ll have to get creative on the strategy. Team Penske will be really strong, so we’ll see if we can make our way forward and get ourselves on the podium.”

Alexander Rossi in the No.7 VELO Chevrolet starts the race from 16th and speaking following the action he said:

“We missed a lot of lap time, so I think there’s nothing you can do other than try to figure it out. We’re quite a ways off, and in previous qualifying sessions this season, we missed the execution side with a pretty good car. Today the execution was there, but there was no lap time. We’ll look into why we didn’t feel much quicker on Firestone reds. There are a lot of questions. It’s been a pretty tough weekend so far.”

Thèo Pourchaire in the No.6 NTT DATA Chevrolet starts his second INDYCAR race from 24th and speaking following the action he said:

Everything I learned from Long Beach is out of the window in a way and we’re starting from zero. It’s not easy jumping into new tracks that I am unfamiliar with, especially one of the toughest ones on the calendar here in Barber. It’s a high-commitment track and I enjoyed it. Our qualifying was not too bad until I made a mistake into Turn 12 and 13. I lost most of my time there and thought I could have been much closer to my teammate Alexander. I continue to learn every single day, and tomorrow with the race we will give our best to overtake a lot of cars for a great race. I am a lot better in the races and enjoy managing the tires and saving fuel. Last weekend we were able to push forward, and I think we can do the same, perhaps even better, here tomorrow.”

Arrow McLaren Team Principal Gavin Ward commented saying:

Another NTT INDYCAR SERIES qualifying session and another reminder that it is quite competitive out here. Pato and the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet team did a great job to squeeze everything out of it today, but we didn’t have the performance to fight for pole. Alexander just missed out on pushing through Q1; a lot of people were in that boat today. Théo continues to learn with a steep learning curve in INDYCAR without test time. I’ve been really happy with him, and I know he is still building up to it. We’ll look forward to have a strong race tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, in response to a tweet, David Malukas said that he is taking it day by day in relation to his injury.