LONG BEACH, Calif. (April 15, 2023) -- Santino Ferrucci was happy with the progress his team made from yesterday afternoon when they first rolled the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet onto the 1.96-mile Long Beach circuit. He was ninth in his qualifying group and will start 18th tomorrow in the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
"We've got a lot of learning to do, but we've done a fantastic job to recover to where we are," Ferrucci said after logging a lap time of one minute, 06.9517 seconds (105.820mph). "I mean, we're in the
ballpark. It's a shame we missed the cutline by two tenths, but yesterday we were 2.2 seconds back. I'd say we're making progress by leaps and bounds and I think we're going to have a much better 'race' car. I think there's a couple things here in qualifying we still have yet to learn even for myself as a driver, but I'm excited.
"We're just making improvements to the car for my driving style. And I'm still new here. I haven't been back to this track since 2019. So, there's a lot of things that we're working on like trying to get a little bit more rotation out of it. I like a free car. We're close; when we figure it out, it's going to look real good."
Benjamin Pedersen came to Long Beach last year when he was shadowing the Foyt team and sitting in on engineering meetings with the drivers and listening on the radio during on track sessions in preparation for his rookie season in the NTT INDYCAR Series.
Pedersen (right) goes over data with his driver coach and spotter Johnathan Jorge.
Driving the No. 55 Sexton Properties Chevrolet, the 23-year-old Danish-American improved his times from yesterday and will line up 23rd on the 27-car grid.
"Tomorrow, it will be my first ever Long Beach race because we didn't race here in the INDY NXT by Firestone," Pedersen explained. "I'm very excited -- a lot can happen tomorrow. We're just going to try to stay clean, have a good strategy and get the most out of the car that we can."
Kyle Kirkwood won his first NTT P1 Award when he paced the final round of qualifying. He posted a lap time of one minute, 6.28 seconds (106.879mph). Rounding out the Firestone Fast Six were Marcus Ericsson, Romain Grosjean, Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Pato O'Ward,
The race will be broadcast live on NBC starting at 3pm ET tomorrow. The 85-lap race will also be streamed live on NBC's Peacock and INDYCAR LIVE and aired on the INDYCAR Radio Network.
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