LEXINGTON, Ohio (July 6, 2024) -- INDYCAR's hybrid engine made its debut this weekend for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio at the park-like 13-turn, 2.25-mile permanent road course. There were a few teething problems which should be sorted for tomorrow's race.
Santino Ferrucci will start 21st in the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet after posting a lap time of 1 minute, 5.9414 seconds (123.273mph).
”Obviously, we’re not a 21st place car," he said. "It’s kind of unfortunate with the way that the groups work but we were just kind of a lap short with all the traffic in qualifying. We needed one more lap to get the tires started and going, so yeah, three-tenths is the difference in being well inside the Fast 12 and basically not great. We’re on par with some of our Penske teammates though and just tough to not have some outright pace this weekend in Q, but our race pace I think is really good.”
Sting Ray Robb was a bit more pleased with his qualifying run because it demonstrated an improvement over his two practice sessions in which he was not happy with his car. Posting a lap time of 1 minute, 6.6894 seconds (121.890mph), he will start 26th in the No. 41 Goodheart.Vet / Pray.com Chevrolet.
“Fairly happy with 26th today. I know that’s a strange thing but the improvement that we made from the first two practices to qualifying was absolutely massive," Robb explained. "I was very unhappy with the car this morning, and going into qualifying I thought that we were taking a knife to a gun fight but we actually put the car in a really good window with a good change from the crew, so super proud of them for that. Not having the deploy for the hybrid system in qualifying I think hurt us quite a bit, as well. Unfortunate that that was the case for the day but I think that we're going to be really good in the race. I’m really happy with the car right now and I think we’re in a much better window. I think that we’ve got some consistency that we can pull from and race forward.”
Alex Palou won his second straight and sixth career NTT P1 Award with a time of 1 minute, 5.3511 seconds (124.387mph). Rounding out the Firestone Fast 6 were: Pato O'Ward, David Malukas, Colton Herta, Marcus Armstrong and Marcus Ericsson. Teams will have a 30-minute morning warmup before the 80-lap afternoon race.
The race will be broadcast on NBC and streamed on Peacock starting at 1:30 p.m. ET.
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