PLYMOUTH, Wisc — David Malukas had an extra bounce in his step on Friday. Not just because he was back at what he considers his home track in Road America, but most importantly, he felt like he had a car capable of doing something special in Sunday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America (1 p.m. ET, USA, INDYCAR Radio Network).

The sophomore driver was P2 in practice 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 a day ago. “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.”

On Saturday morning, the pace remained. He was fourth overall. However, he was surprisingly eliminated in the opening round of qualifying on Saturday afternoon and will start 13th on Sunday.

Malukas registered an initial fast lap of 1:41.6562 on his second lap which placed him third in his group before heading to pit lane to switch to the alternate Firestone tire.

He then improved his time on his final two laps of the 12-minute session, recording a fastest lap of 1:41.5204.

Unfortunately for Malukas, his time wasn’t quick enough and he was eliminated. He was upset calling it very frustrating to lose the pace to advance to the next round.

However, once they debriefed and he saw how close he truly was, they found the problem and made his confidence come back to make a run at it for Sunday’s 55 lap race.

“We thought we had a shot at the Fast 12 this weekend. With our results in the practice sessions, I really thought that was achievable, but we didn’t make it. It’s so frustrating,” he later said. “We looked at the data and know what the issue was and it’s an easy fix that we can learn from and hopefully that will allow us to make it the Fast 12 in future qualifying sessions. Onto the race, we’re still starting P13, and we can definitely work from there.”

Malukas was just under 0.05 seconds from making it to the Fast 12 for the first time this season. With that said, the pace was strong enough at a place that they didn’t expect to be this strong.

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.”

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.”