Dale Coyne Racing with Rick Ware Racing’s Takuma Sato in the No.51 Nurtec ODT Honda heads into this weekend’s XPEL 375 at Texas Motor Speedway, the opening oval race of the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season aiming to have a solid race as they will have a challenging event given that it his first oval race of the season because they just have one hour-long practice session on Saturday before heading straight into qualifying for the race. Speaking ahead of the race this weekend, Sato commented saying:
I’m very excited to be heading to Texas Motor Speedway (TMS) this weekend! My first oval outing with DCR will be only one practice session and straight into qualifying so I can imagine it’s going to be a little challenging, but we’re up for it. DCR has been competitive on ovals so I can’t wait to go fast with our #51 Nurtec ODT Honda. We of course always like to be the best but that might be a bit too high expectation at this point. It’s only our second race together and after finishing in top-10 at the season opener, I would just like to improve on that result this weekend.
“I always enjoy racing at Texas Motor Speedway. It is a very tough racetrack where usually a lot of drama happens. It’s an iconic high-speed oval with such a high banking. We used to go three-wide and four-wide sometimes, with unbelievably intense racing but today it offers a different kind of racing. With recent aero and track changes it’s very tough to overtake now so it’s a different challenge. You really must manage tires well during the stint then if you are in good shape for the second half of the stint, you’ll be able to enjoy the race so much more! Because once you start to struggle with grip, you just can’t keep the speed at all. Overall, TMS is a really challenging oval and it gives us no margin for any errors.
David Malukas in the No.18 Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports Honda is looking to bounce back from a tricky season-opening Firestone Grand Prix presented by RP Funding this weekend as he makes his oval race debut in Texas.
Speaking ahead of the race, Malukas commented saying:
“We’re just a day away from being on track at Texas Motor Speedway and I’m so excited. I can’t wait for my first NTT INDYCAR SERIES race on an oval. We had a test day at the beginning of the month, and it went very well. We were able to practice different things like a qualifying sim and a race stint sim with the other rookies that were on track. It was a little tough to pass with the one-line deal but I know INDYCAR has been working to resolve that and make it better. Other than that, from my side everything with the car came quickly to me, there’s a lot more tools that you can use in an Indy car compared to what I’m used to in Indy Lights. Overall, I’m really looking forward to it. In Indy Lights in the only oval weekend, we had at Gateway last year, we swept the weekend and had a great race so hopefully we can continue that oval momentum going into Texas.”