PLYMOUTH, Wisc — Last year’s NTT INDYCAR SERIES pole winner at Road America, Alexander Rossi, wasted little time getting back to the top of speed charts on the 4.014-mile scenic road course. The now Arrow McLaren Racing driver topped the opening session on a beautiful Friday afternoon in Wisconsin with a top time of 1:41.7790-seconds in his No. 7 Dallara-Chevrolet.
“You never get all you want out of it because usually you’re limited on the amount of tires you have and everything,” Rossi said on if he got everything out of his lap on Friday.
Rossi was one of a handful of drivers to test here last week. That paid dividends for his early pace out of the gates.
“It was interesting for us, having tested here last week, to understand the difference in the tire that Firestone brought for this weekend because no one that tested here had the actual tire,” he continued. Obviously trying the reds for the first time. So it was an interesting session.
“Yeah, definitely lots to digest overnight.”
Part of what to digest is the speed that was turned on Friday and how the car and tires reacted to the newly paved surface. Rossi’s lap was set on primary tires. No one, including himself, was able to top that time late in the incident free practice session when they slapped on the typically faster red sidewall alternate tires.
Was it because no one tested the reds last week? Could be. But nevertheless, it was still eye opening that the faster tire was the primary one.
Rossi, was also quickest in last year’s opening 75-minute session, but this time due to the new surface, he was nearly four seconds faster in going 1:41.7 compared to 1:45.6 just 12 months ago.
In fact, all 27 drivers on Friday afternoon were quicker in Session 1 than Rossi’s pole winning time of last June for which the repave contributed to much faster speeds this time around.
“Really you don’t do anything different,” Rossi said of the repave. “I think it’s just there’s more potential from the car and the tire, so you have to have probably a higher level of commitment than you did last year.
“Last year with the surface, I never thought it was particularly bumpy, but the car slid around on the track quite a bit more than it does now. It’s quite a bit in the track, similar to what Watkins Glen was like when it was repaved, what Barber was like when it was repaved. You feel the car digging in more than you did before. But everyone has that advantage now.
“Really your approach is no different whether it was low grip or high grip.”
Second place on the speed chart, David Malukas, felt like it was a big change for him though.
“Yeah, it’s massive change. I remember at the testing, when we tested last week, I was just in shock but how much more you could push the braking zones. It’s almost more than double,” he noted.
“Other than that, the characteristics very much the same. Carrousel, the Canada Corner all has the same feeling. Just so much more grip.
“This track was already one of my favorites before, but now it’s officially taken the top spot.”
Malukas (1:41.8652-seconds) was P2 in his No. 18 Dallara-Honda while Alex Palou (1:41.9486-seconds), Scott Dixon (1:41.9544-seconds) and Pato O’Ward (1:41.9778-seconds) rounded out the top five of the incident free practice.
Ryan Hunter-Reay, in his first road course action since 2021 ended up P22 on the board, quicker than five full-time drivers (Jack Harvey, Benjamin Pedersen, Callum Ilott, Rinus VeeKay and Simon Pagenaud).
McLaren and Ganassi were fast, Andretti and Penske were not and the track surface provided the quickest times since 2000.
Here are my top five takeaways.
McLaren Shows Strength In Opening Practice
Rossi had a lot of company up front via his McLaren teammates up front. All three were found in the top seven of Session 1 with them being 1-5-8. It’s a great sign that the momentum is continuing forward.
“I think we as a group would be pretty disappointed, considering we tested here, if we didn’t roll off the truck pretty strong. I think it’s still early days,” said Rossi.
“But, yes, certainly the potential is there. It wasn’t a very clean run or laps by me, so I think there’s certainly quite a bit more in it, which is a good sign.
“So, yeah, it’s just about really diving into, again, the tire differences because it’s a chunk slower than our pace in testing. So understanding the differences there and making any adjustments to the car to kind of combat that going into tomorrow.
“Obviously track evolution is going to continue being a thing, and other cars are going to keep improving, so you can’t stay still, you have to keep improving.”
Arrow McLaren Racing is 0-for-7 this season in regards to victories. In fact, they’ve won just once in the last 20 races. However, among the 7 races this season, they’ve had the next best finisher in three of them. They’ve been on the podium in four of the seven races too.
The thing is, while O’Ward has hit a lull recently, the overall momentum of McLaren in general is trending up.
They had two of the three podium spots in the GMR Grand Prix last month. All three cars finished in the top five that day. In Detroit, they had two of their three cars again in the top five.
Felix Rosenqvist (8th on Friday) now has four top 10 finishes over the last five races including a pair of top fives in the last three. He had three total top five finishes in 2022 and already has two in the first seven races in 2023.
In fact, the Swedish driver is really starting to find his groove. That all started in last year’s GMR Grand Prix.
Prior to that, he had no top five finishes, just two top 10’s and 14 laps led in his first 18 starts with McLaren. Over his last 20, he’s had 14 top 10 finishes, five top fives and 65 laps led.
Is it enough to keep his job with the team? Speculation is that Alex Palou is coming over and both Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi are in the midst of multi-year deals. With Kyle Larson running the Indy 500, is Rosenqvist doing enough to salvage his job with this team?
Right now, he’s making it hard for them to not keep him as he’s returned to the spot of his first INDYCAR win.
“I think we needed it,” Rosenqvist said of this podium finish in Detroit. “We’ve been pretty much up there every weekend. We had three DNFs which hurt.
“It seems this year in the championship a lot of the top runners have had tough races as well. I think we can recover if we keep the momentum going.
“It’s nice. I think all the boys and girls on the 6 car, Arrow McLaren, really deserved it. We’ve been up there sniffing for a long time. Hasn’t worked out.”
The momentum is equally building for Rossi. He just scored his fifth top 10 finish of the season already including four of which being in the top five. He was third in the GMR Grand Prix, fifth in the last two races (Indy 500, Detroit).
By comparison, he had just three top five finishes with Andretti in 2021 and five each for the 2020 and 2022 seasons. He’s nearly had as many top fives in 7 starts with McLaren than he had in full seasons with Andretti.
With having momentum now, I was curious his thoughts on in a series as difficult as this one, is it harder to get momentum or keep it?
“That’s a good question. Probably keep, you know, I think I think every driver and team can like look back on weekends of like, you can pull positives out of anything, right?” he told me. “And so like internally, that can be good momentum, even if like the result doesn’t show it like take RLL for example. Like I think as a three car group, they probably have a lot of good momentum. So it’s definitely harder to keep you know, the series is so competitive and you can go one weekend from thinking you’ve got everything sorted out to the next beam. absolutely nowhere. So it’s challenging.”
Rossi scored a pole here a year ago with Andretti.
Ganassi Might Still Be Ones To Beat On Sunday
Chip Ganassi Racing has three of the top four in points coming into the weekend including 1-2. While they didn’t have the fast time in practice, they still put all four of their drivers in the top 10 at the checkered flag.
Alex Palou (1:41.9486-seconds) was third, Scott Dixon on his final lap went 1:41.9544-seconds to come in fourth while Marcus Ericsson (1:42.0426-seconds) and rookie Marcus Armstrong (1:42.2146-seconds) was 10th.
Palou earned the team’s most recent win at the track in 2021 during his title-winning campaign.
“It’s been a good start to the season so far and it feels like the No. 10 car has been on a roll,” Palou said. “We’ve had really good races since the month of May, and we want to continue that. We’re going to my favorite road course of the year with that brand new pavement that we haven’t tried, just like the other teams. We’ve been working hard with the simulator and back at the shop to make sure we’re ready.”
Ericsson and the No. 8 team have launched an impressive championship chase of their own to kick off the 2023 season. Like Palou, Ericsson has finished in the top-10 in all seven races to kick off the year. He picked up a win in the St. Pete season opener and has also led laps in four of the seven races.
Despite still searching for his first career road course victory, he holds the second-best average finishing position (7.83 Dixon: 7.29) on such tracks since joining CGR in 2020. He earned a P2 finish at Road America in 2022 and has placed top-10 in all four of his races at the track with Chip Ganassi Racing.
“Road America this weekend, and it is one of my absolute favorites,” said Ericsson. “It’s the best road course of the season, no doubt. It’s a track where we finished second last year, so good memories from there. Obviously, we want to make the top step this weekend, though. We’re coming into the race with a really good feeling. We’ve had a good start to the season with all seven races in the top-10 and sitting second in the championship. It will be interesting this weekend with the new surface laid down at Road America and it’ll be something to follow. The atmosphere is always amazing with so many people and it being such a beautiful place to go race at. I’m really looking forward to the weekend.”
While Ericsson is chasing Palou, they may both be chasing Dixon.
Dixon is no stranger to victory at Road America. He’s won twice before (2020; 2017) and with a third win, would tie Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi and Michael Andretti for the most INDYCAR wins in track history.
“This is one of the cool, old-school tracks that we get to go to,” he says. “There are some unknowns with the resurfacing, but it sounds like it’s a really fast track with possibilities of breaking the all-time records with some of the test times that we’ve seen. Love the high-grip circuits and hopefully that plays well for us. It’s been great to us in the past as a team.”
The Iceman has exhibited a strong qualifying pace this year, as he is one of just four drivers to qualify among the top-12 in all seven races and has also advanced to the Firestone Fast 6 in five of those races.
We can’t ignore their rookie teammate either though.
While he isn’t keen on the “biggest mover” title, Armstrong has generated a net gain of +20 positions from the start to finish of road and street course races this season. That is the third-most positions gained across the field (Rahal: +28; Power: +23).
He remains the top rookie with 101 points despite racing on only road and street courses this year.
“This is a great track, which has obviously been resurfaced, and it should make a big difference to the car set-up and philosophy,” he noted. “I think it’ll be a good advantage to have tested there last week. I enjoyed the track and I feel like it reminded me of a lot of racing in Spa with the nature of the circuit, the layout and the style of driving. I’m looking forward to it and feel like it’ll be a great weekend, as well.”
Palou and Ericsson have both recorded a top-10 finish in all seven races to kick off the season. Only two other drivers (Castroneves – 2017; Power – 2014) have finished top-10 in each of the first eight races to start the INDYCAR season since reunification in 2008.
Chip Ganassi Racing boasts the best average starting position (7.64) among all teams this year, with both Palou and Dixon advancing to compete in the Firestone Fast 6 in five of the seven races. The team will look to capture pole position for the third consecutive race weekend (Palou: Detroit and Indianapolis 500), something they have not done since 2012 (Milwaukee; Iowa; Toronto).
The team has recorded six wins (2021; 2020 Race 1/2; 2017; 2001; 1997) and 13 podiums at the 4.048-mile, 14-turn road course in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
Ganassi vs. McLaren Instead of Ganassi vs. Penske?
Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske have combined to have won each of the last four Road America races including 7 of the 8 since the 2016 return. They’ve also had the most podiums scored here with Penske having 9 and Ganassi 7 in that span as well.
Their dominance isn’t just dependent on this scenic Wisconsin road course either.
The two teams have combined to have won each of the last 10 series championships. They’ve also won 6 of the 7 races this year and 40 of the 54 (75.4%) of the races with the Aeroscreen. Furthermore, if you go back to the 2022 Indy 500, they’ve combined to have won 16 of the last 19 (84.2%) of the races.
Penske has won nine times in that span, Ganassi with seven. Andretti has won twice and McLaren once.
The thing is, Ganassi showed their strength on Friday, Penske though..didn’t. They were only P15–P16-P17 respectively.
McLaren took their place up front with the seven combined Ganassi and McLaren cars making up 7 of the top 10 speeds in Practice 1.
Penske is having to play from behind now. They were 4-6-8 last year.
Record May Be Safe
Most figured it would be a clean sweep all around for track records. The Road to Indy practices all shattered the quickest lap times of their respectively divisions over the course of their days on Friday. The Indy NXT quickest time was 1:49.6479-seconds compared to the track record being 1:52.0034-seconds.
The INDYCAR record is 1:39.866-seconds set by Dario Franchitti in Aug. 2000. Most figured it would get broke. Now, I’m not so sure.
Rossi was quickest at 1:41.7-seconds on Friday which was 1.9-seconds shy of the record. While that time was on the Firestone primary tires, the drivers late on the alternates couldn’t beat it, even with clean laps.
Can they gain 2-seconds overnight?
Strong Showing For Coyne Cars
This is David Malukas’ hometrack. He grew up watching his dad race here and the place to where he decided that he wanted to do this himself. Now, here he is making his second start on the scenic track. Last year, he finished 16th. This year, while a disappointing start to the season, he has once again showed promise.
The sophomore driver was P2 on Friday at 1:41.8652-seconds in his No. 18 Dallara-Honda. It was a much better way to start things after entering the weekend with five straight finishes of 19th or worse.
“Yeah, it was very good,” Malukas said. “We tested here, we found a couple things. At the end of the day we were kind of like, Speed is still there, car feels very good. Our hopes were high coming into today.
“Obviously went out and, again, we definitely found something. I think we’re a little bit closer now and kind of can restart our season. The way I’m explaining it is we had a mid-season slumber, the car was sleeping, getting ready, now we’ve awakened and we’re ready for the second half.”
The first two races though saw him finish in the top 10, so is this the start to getting back to that strength, especially since they figured that these types of tracks would be their struggle point this season.
“Feels really good because if you just look back from the start of the season, our expectations were that we were going to struggle on road courses,” Malukas said. “Barber, Indy GPs was kind of what we expected.
“Going into this weekend, it feel goods that we’ve found a few things. We knew it at the test. We made some key changes. I said, Okay, well, that felt very, very good.
“Coming into this weekend, it kind of seems like we’re there. Now we can kind of start focusing and making the small changes to catch up with all these frontrunners.”
It looks like it. His rookie teammate, Sting Ray Robb, was an impressive 14th in his No. 51 Dallara-Honda.
For Malukas, he was second and 14th in USF2000 competition in 2017. A year later, he won both Pro Mazda races. In 2019 and 2021, he was 6th, 4th, 7th and 1st respectively.
With wins in all but one step of the ladder, can his maiden INDYCAR win come on Sunday.
“Yeah, it’s very exciting,” continued Malukas. “We’ve had a lot of success here in the past going through the ladder series. Leading up to it, we’ve done a lot of different interviews and things, channels in Chicago, to boost the fans here.
“Obviously being here today, a lot of Chicago natives. I met someone that went to the same middle school that I went to, which is cool and interesting.”
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