Arrow McLaren Team Principal Gavin Ward says what a weekend at The Thermal Club and that the team are ready for the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach on April 21st.
The team had a rough day at The Thermal Club despite Alexander Rossi getting into the All-Star race where he finished in seventh place after starting from tenth.
That was pretty anti-climactic. It’s hard to pass around here. The car was good, and we were able to move up from 14th overall to start the day to P7 in the final race. Now we move on to Long Beach
Pato O’Ward in the No.5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet started Heat Two from ninth place and came home in seventh and speaking following the action he said:
It was a a challenging weekend for us. In terms of testing, we had a pretty phenomenal week. In terms of race format and results, I would call it the Bermuda Triangle of race tracks. That is what my engineer Kate Gundlach said, and I would have to agree. It’s a very temperature sensitive track, very wind sensitive, and we were on the wrong side of it in qualifying. That’s something that none of us could have predicted and is probably something that has never been seen before in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. We’ll learn from it, and we can apply it when we come back next year, but that’s it from us. I’m glad we’re heading to Long Beach; it’s a place that we know. All this work will be for something. I’m looking forward to getting back to our championship.”
Callum Ilott in the No.6 NTT DATA Chevrolet started Heat 2 from 8th place and he came home in ninth and speaking following the action he said”
The start today was strong and a bit scrappy, but then I was fighting with Blomqvist quite hard. I had some contact with him, but we just didn’t have the pace from there. Pato and Alexander got past me, and it was just a push to the end. Good job to Alexander to get into the All-Star Race; his team did a solid job.
This was a weekend of missed opportunity. We were super strong in practice, and it’s a shame we couldn’t do more with it. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and qualifying was full of potential, but unfortunately we didn’t get the results there we were looking for. A lot of lessons learned from it, and I think the team knows how we could’ve done some things differently.
“Honestly, this weekend was great. It was good to come out here with a lot of pace, and I really enjoyed working with the team. I’m thankful for the opportunity. It’s a shame we didn’t get more out of it, we all deserved a bit more. Big thanks to Zak, Gavin, Tony, NTT DATA, Team Chevy and Arrow McLaren for giving me the opportunity.”