ELKHART LAKE, Wis. (June 8, 2024) -- After a solid day of practice on Friday afternoon at the beautiful 4-mile road course known as Road America, aka "America's National Park of Speed," hopes were high in the AJ Foyt Racing camp.
Santino is all smiles after setting third quickest time in Friday afternoon's practice.
Santino Ferrucci was third quickest in practice yesterday in the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet, and Robb, who was not as quick, was looking to improve his setup on the No. 41 Goodheart Chevrolet in the post-practice debrief. Unfortunately, steady rain, heavy at times, played havoc with today's practice and qualifying sessions for the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America.
Qualifying did not go well for either Ferrucci or Robb. The rain made for tricky track conditions even though it wasn't nearly as heavy during the first rounds of qualifying as it was in the morning practice.
Ferrucci was deeply disappointed in his qualifying run. He posted a "banker lap" on his first set of rain tires and then pitted for a second set of tires, believing the fresh set would be needed. He was on what would have been his optimal lap, which was indeed quicker than his first run, when he had to abort it due to traffic ahead of him. With little time left in the round and the car not quite as responsive, his next lap proved slower. He will start 19th, inside row 10.
"We're not where we wanted to qualify. I think we have a better car than that. Hindsight's twenty-twenty, and we just made ourselves a lot of work for Sunday," a dejected Ferrucci said.
Robb with the rain tires (note the tread design) on his Goodheart Chevrolet in qualifying today.
Robb, 11th quick in the morning practice in the wet, was in the second group of Round 1 qualifiers. Like Ferrucci, Robb also used two sets of rain tires on his No. 41 Goodheart/Pray.com Chevrolet. He too was disappointed in his run; he will start 26th. "Tough qualifying session again,” said the 22-year-old. “The rain was interesting, I thought that we would have had a little bit more similarities to what we had in practice, but it felt like a different car, so really surprised and disappointed with the results. I think that it will be a long day tomorrow to race forward. But I'm hopeful that we can get a good strategy call; it's been chaos the last few races in IndyCar so maybe at this point, the chaos will help us out."
Robb chats with his crew chief Nick "Coop" Cooper yesterday when the sun was shining.
Rookie Linus Lundqvist won his first NTT P1 award edging out Colton Herta. Rounding out the Firestone Fast 6 were: Marcus Armstrong, Kyle Kirkwood, Will Power and Josef Newgarden.
Newgarden escaped serious injury when he slid off track after dropping a wheel in "the kink" causing him to spin and pancake the SAFER barrier hard. Power also went off to bring out the red flag earlier in the session. Both drivers lost their two quickest laps and their positions were determined by their times in Round 2 (Fast 12).
With the rain cleared out, teams will have a morning practice to reset their cars for what promises to be beautiful track conditions Sunday afternoon. The race will be broadcast live by NBC starting at 3 p.m. ET and will be streamed live on Peacock.
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