Arrow McLaren Team Principal Gavin Ward says that fifth place Pato O’Ward in the No.5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet was all that the team could achieve on Friday for Saturday’s Sonsio Grand Prix of Indianapolis on the IMS road course. O’Ward will start the race from fifth just ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and speaking following the action, Ward said:
“It seemed like fifth place was about all we could muster today. IndyCar is tight and it all comes down to a couple tenths. The No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet team did a great job advancing to the Firestone Fast 6, and Pato executed to extract the maximum.
It was a very solid run by Rossi. Seventh will be the best start of the year for him and the No. 7 VELO team, so some good progress there. This track is definitely one where you can pass, so hopefully, he can make up some ground early.
Theo’s got a little bit of work to do from where he is, but I don’t think the results matched his pace. His pace was better than that but he just got in a bit of a mess with traffic.”
Speaking after setting a fastest time of 01:09.3320s O’Ward said:
“Considering where we started the day, I’m pretty pleased with getting the car in the Firestone Fast 6. We’re starting inside row three, which is not a bad place to start here. We’ll see what Turn 1 brings, and then we just really want to have a clean race. I don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves by saying that we’re expecting to win or get on the podium tomorrow, I just want to have a clean race and take advantage of the opportunity presented to us.”
Alexander Rossi in the No.7 VELO Chevrolet starts the race from P7 and speaking following the action, the 2016 Indianapolis 500 winner said:
“I don’t know how excited to be with P7, but I guess where we’ve been this season, we have to be. In this sport, you’ve got to take the small victories. The whole Arrow McLaren organization has done a great job this weekend. The car is kind of back into a window we expected after the last two events that were quite a challenge. We’ve just got to keep chipping away at it. It sucks to miss it by that much, for sure. When it’s that close, there’s so many places over the lap where you feel like you could have found it. You almost would rather miss it by several tenths. But that’s the way it goes. We know that we’re strong on race day. This gives us our best opportunity, by far.”
Theo Pourchaire in the No.6 SmartStop Storage Chevrolet starts his second INDYCAR SERIES race from 18th place on the grid and speaking following the action her said:
“I’m a bit disappointed after qualifying. I was P5 before the run on the alternates and then I was blocked on my best chance to push. The NTT INDYCAR SERIES is one of the best motorsport series in the world with the best racing drivers in the world. It’s super tight. As soon as you have those kind of things happening, you cannot aim for Q2. It’s part of the game, but I really think we have the potential to move up through the field and deliver a strong result tomorrow.”