Championship leader Alex Palou in the No.10 The American Legion Chip Ganassi Racing Honda will start today’s Big Machine Music City Grand Prix on the streets of Nashville from fourth place. The Spaniard goes into the race with an 80-point lead in the championship over Team Pensek’s Josef Newgarden and speaking after setting a 01:15.2462s and following the action. he commented saying:
“Honestly, we had a good car and a fast car. Happy to be out there and fighting for pole. Made a small mistake on my second lap, but pretty happy with P4. It is going to be an entertaining day tomorrow for sure. We don’t really know what the long run looks like here since we haven’t had the opportunity with the weather. We’ve been good all year and we just need to work a little bit more tonight and get ready for tomorrow.”
Defending Nashville winner Scott Dixon in the No.9 PNC Bank Honda will make his 318th consecutive NTT INDYCAR SERIES race start, tieing the record with Tony Kanaan.
The Iceman struggled in qualifying and hit the wall hard in the Fast 12 and will start the race from 12th place two spots further up from where he won from lat season and speaking following the action he said:
“I feel bad for obviously the crew there. Clipping the inside wall there and it just kind of put a strain into the outside. I feel bad for the other drivers too that were on the lap. But, it is what it is. It’s a tough circuit and the front just turned a lot better than I thought it was going to and unfortunately clipped that outside wall. We’ll just try to stay out of the mess tomorrow, but I think the past two champions here have been involved in a lot of mess.”
Marcus Armstrong in the No.11 Ridgeline Lubricants Honda starts the race from 16th place with a time of 01:15.5631s and speaking following the action he commented saying:
“Not a very good session, honestly. We had all the pace in the world to be up there with Alex. Unfortunately, I didn’t get my lap in when the tires were good. I just overreacted to a slow out lap from everyone else and it was my mistake. Gutted, to be honest.”
Marcus Ericsson in the No.8 Huski Iced Spritz Honda who took victory in the inaugural race here in 2021 struggled in qualifying and starts the race from 20th place with a time of 01:16.0420s and speaking following the action the Swede said:
“It’s been a tough weekend for us. We were hoping for a dry practice this morning so we could figure things out. We went into qualifying feeling pretty fine, but we were just so far behind everyone else.”