NASHVILLE — Will Power picked the speed up where it left off in Iowa. The Team Penske driver swept both poles a couple of weeks ago on the .894-mile bullring and ended up P1 in the opening NTT INDYCAR SERIES practice season on a cloudy and wet day in Nashville.
The pole king turned a top lap of 1:16.4042-seconds in his No. 12 Chevrolet during a disjointed session.
“Yeah, good start,” he said. “Certainly had good cars here last year. Just the race is a very different story to being quick in practice and qualifying.
“Yep, good start. Long weekend. But very determined to start at the front. That’s been the issue. Starting at the front in Iowa is okay, but it’s very easy to pass there. If I wasn’t the first across the line in Toronto, would have been starting certainly better than sixth, maybe first. Then you have a legitimate shot at the win, otherwise you don’t.”
The early portions as usual, saw the rookies take to the 2.17-mile track. That’s because the 75 minute practice and limiting tires costs the veterans track time. The rookies get an extra set so promptly uses them.
Once the track gets rubbered in, then activity ramped up.
Rookie Marcus Armstrong set the pace early before Christian Lundgaard eclipsed his lap time to end up P1 in his No. 45 Dallara-Honda with a lap of 1:18.0009-seconds. Pato O’Ward would later top that time and get into the 1:17-second barrier at 1:17.4437-seconds while his Arrow McLaren Racing teammate Alexander Rossi ran three-tenths adrift in second.
Points leader Alex Palou jumped to the top spot not long after in going into the 1:16-barrier. Colton Herta, Scott McLaughlin and Scott Dixon all went faster in going 1-2-3-4 on the Firestone primary tires. O’Ward, Power and Josef Newgarden were right behind.
In the final 15 minutes, teams slapped on the faster alternate tires. Power jumped to the top of the board in doing so at 1:16.4042-seconds. Palou (1:16.6494-seconds) had to settle for P2 in his No. 10 Dallara-Honda.
Rossi and O’Ward ended up P3 (1:16.7192-seconds) and P4 (1:16.7778-seconds) respectively while Lundgaard (1:16.9262-seconds) and Herta (1:16.9698-seconds) rounded out the Fast Six in the 75-minute long practice as the only six drivers to get into the 76-second barrier.
The final 15 minutes was a disrupted one with Callum Ilott spinning in Turn 11 and stalling. Once green with 3 1/2 minutes left, Power found the Turn 1 wall. He’d get back going before Benjamin Pedersen got into the Turn 11 runoff and ending the session early.
“A lot of the quick guys did get a run on their reds. But greens… And I was pushing, yeah,” Power said of the late practice date with the wall. “I haven’t been down runoffs this year. Trying to push the limit a little bit.
“It was the second run, too. It surprised me that happened. Maybe it was ’cause it was the first lap, but… I didn’t go crazy deep. I just sort of grabbed the front, yeah, got to the wall.”
Palou Sending Warning Shot
With Alex Palou in 2nd, he sent a warning shot to the field that he’s going to be a force to be reckoned with again. After being on the podium here last year and being 1st and 2nd respectively on the last two street events, to come out of the day on Friday in P2 again should send some fear into the paddock that he could very well wrap this title race up early.
Malukas, Lundqvist Shine
The two stories of the day were former HMD Racing teammates in the Indy NXT Series David Malukas and Linus Lundqvist. Malukas was P7 with a top lap of 1:17.1536-seconds in his No. 18 Dallara-Honda while Lundqvist was an impressive 11th (1:17.3523-seconds) in his No. 60 Dallara-Honda in a sub role for injured Simon Pagenaud.
“Yeah, it was really good,” Malukas said. “We went off a bit earlier because we didn’t really know what was going to happen with the weather. We didn’t want to take too much of a chance. Obviously going out a bit earlier, there was no grip, cleaning it up.
“Going through my air tube, going into my helmet, so much stuff going into my face. Definitely a bit of cleaning for the first five minutes. After that, it was putting rubber down. We ended up putting on the Guayules and it ended up being pretty good.”
These two finished P2 (Malukas) and P3 (Lundqvist) in points that season as teammates and while Malukas moved up to Indy Car last season, Lundqvist came back. He’d end up winning the Indy NXT championship on the heels of 5 wins and 9 podiums in 14 races.
Unfortunately, the Road to Indy funding was severely cut for which Lundqvist found out the hard way on the night of the banquet. Without the proper prize money fund, he lacked the resources to land a full-time gig this season. It kept him out of the three-race scholarship too.
So, Lundqvist has been on the sidelines patiently waiting. He’s tested for multiple teams, but nothing has come to fruition.
Until MSR called.
Pagenaud was injured in a frightening practice crash back on July 1 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. While he walked away and felt okay afterwards, he’s not passed any tests after to return to the cockpit.
Conor Daly was a last minute addition in Mid-Ohio while Tom Blomqvist ran the street race in Toronto. Daly was back for the Iowa doubleheader before Lundqvist getting the nod to make his INDYCAR debut this weekend.
Luckily, he’s been here before, winning the Indy NXT race on these same streets a year ago. However, he’s not raced an Indy Car before and doing so with a team that’s struggling this season in MSR could be a massive task.
However, coming home 11th after turning 30 laps was as impressive of a debut that we’ve seen. By comparison, Blomqvist was two seconds off in Toronto in last. Even Ryan Hunter-Reay stepping foot in his role at ECR was facing large deficits to overcome.
For Lundqvist to get his laps and to be this fast this soon is a great sign of things to come this weekend.
For Malukas, the speed continues. He was quick in Road America practice. He qualified 12th and finished 6th in Mid-Ohio. Toronto was rough but a pair of top 10 starts (9th, 3rd) in Iowa and finishes of 12th and 8th that weekend have him beaming with pride.
In a crowded room of two Penske’s, two Ganassi’s, two McLaren’s, two Andretti’s and the last street race winner and pole sitter in Lundgaard came Malukas in the middle of all. Lundqvist was right behind with another Ganassi, Penske and Andretti car behind him.
“I mean, we’ve kind of been on a consistent trend I feel like these past few races. I feel like we want to keep onto that,” he said.
“Our goal from the start of this season, if we get a top 10 finish by the end of the race, we’ll be ecstatic. I think that will be a very good result for us. I think that stays going into this weekend.”
Watch Out For Herta
Colton Herta was P6 on Friday, but what some may not see is that his top lap was set on the Firestone primary tires. He never got a clean lap in the end on the alternates due to the late session red flags. To be this quick this soon on the opposite tire is a great sign of a potentially good weekend out of him.
“Obviously didn’t get a lap there on the reds. Too much traffic for me,” he said. “But balancing great on the black tires. Was happy with the car. I think we were P2 on blacks. Not a bad start.”
Herta has 4 top 6 starts in the last 6 races including a pair of poles. The only one not was a weekend in Toronto for which he was quickest on Saturday morning practice before rain fell and ruined their chances on a dry setup. He’d still rebound from 14th to finish on the podium in 3rd for his only podium finish of the year.
He returns to Nashville, his new home city as he moved here this past offseason, looking for redemption. He qualified on the pole and dominated the inaugural race weekend in 2021 before crashing while running second late in that race while chasing down the leader. Last year he only qualified 23rd but came up to finish 5th.
“I’m not really too sure. It seems like the fastest way to win this race is crash your car in the first lap, do six pit stops, then pit with six to go and stay out (smiling),” he said.
“I don’t know. It’s a crazy one. Obviously it’s very different to any other race that we go to. But we always plan for the most normal race possible, then obviously strategies change. In this one, they really change.
“It’s hard to know what a good strategy and bad strategy is depending on what’s happening. I’m hoping this new restart zone fixes a lot of the problems we’ve had in the past and it’s a little bit more of a normal race.
“You don’t want a full green flag race because that makes it stale for the racing. We definitely want to do better than eight or nine cautions than it has been the last few years.”
A drawback of not having data on the alternates is that it’s not exactly great to find tweaks to a qualifying setup, but he does have teammates to that he can bounce ideas off of to get them in the right direction.
“The street courses have typically gone more towards just try to run the black tires as often as possible. The reds seem to have some pretty good deg,” he said.
“It’s hard for me to comment on it just because I never got a run on the red tires. I’m not really sure what their tendencies are. But I can’t imagine it being too different than years previous.”
Lundgaard Right Back Again
Christian Lundgaard said before Toronto that if they can roll off the truck with speed, then he’s noticed that it bodes well for the rest of the weekend. That particular weekend, he was 17th quickest. They gained 11 spots overnight in being 6th in Saturday morning practice. He gained again in taking the pole.
This time around, he was 5th. He was in the top five in pace on the Firestone primary tires as well on the alternates. He qualified third here last year and finished eighth. To be quick this early is a great sign.
Does McLaren Have Something?
Gavin Ward of McLaren said this past week that they’re going to swing for some fences this weekend in trying out different things on their cars. That’s because they’ve struggled on street courses in 2023 and figured with the final one up ahead, why not try something else.
That’s why with them being 3-4-18 on the speed charts, I think what they may have tried may be working…
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