SALINAS, Calif — Colton Herta led a messy NTT INDYCAR SERIES practice session on Friday from WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. The Andretti Autosport driver turned a top time of 1:07.5382-seconds in his No. 26 Dallara-Honda around the 2.238-mile road course.
Herta has won not only 2 of the last 3 poles here, but he won both of those races as well in leading 83 laps in 2019 and 91 more in 2021.
To be this fast this soon, watch out.
Pato O’Ward (1:07.5911-seconds), Alexander Rossi (1:07.6336-seconds), Marcus Ericsson (1:07.7913-seconds), Kyle Kirkwood (1:07.8502-seconds) and Juri Vips (1:07.9175-seconds) rounded out the Fast Six times on a sun filled Friday afternoon.
Teams Left Guessing Still
Despite 5 -hours of testing on Thursday and a 75-minute-long session on Friday, teams are still left guessing heading into Saturday’s final qualifying session of the season. That’s because these teams have virtually no hot laps turned on the Firestone alternate. See, those red sidewalled tires weren’t allowed to be used during Thursday’s test and with them available on Friday, as usual, teams waited until the end to slap them on.
However, it was a messy day of practice which meant not many drivers got a clean lap on the faster alternate tires.
As a result of Saturday morning’s practice not having the alternate tires able to be used again, it has teams going into qualifying blind.
Messy Weekend
There were 11 stoppages for off track excursions during the test on Thursday. On Friday, the 75-minute-long session, there were five more incidents that brought out the red flag, four of which for cars getting off track.
It all started 32 minutes into the session for Romain Grosjean losing control of his No. 28 Dallara-Honda in Turn 4 and backing into the tire barriers.
13 minutes later, the lone mechanical issue occurred when Juri Vips’ team found an engine problem and told him to stop on course at 3:15 p.m. locally. He stopped in Turn 6 just three minutes after going green again from Grosjean’s incident.
The green flag would come back out at 3:21 p.m. locally then again, three minutes later, Scott McLaughlin got off course in Turn 2.
The green was displayed at 3:29 p.m. only for a red at 3:34 p.m. for Agustin Canapino getting off course in Turn 6.
The green came back out five minutes later (3:39 p.m) before Will Power brought out the dagger two minutes after that (3:41 p.m.) when he got into the Turn 4 wall and stopped in Turn 5.
Basically, from 3:12 p.m through the checkered at 3:45 p.m. there was only 13 minutes of green flag action with the most consecutive minutes being five.
That’s why no one got much time on reds.
As far as why so much carnage? Well it’s simple. The track being repaved and track position meaning so much here, you have to push. 21 of the last 24 visits won from a top 3 starter (15 from the pole, 4 from 2nd)
As a result, if you get off the racing line, you become a passenger.
“Yeah, super grippy track. It’s incredible this repave how much performance it extracts from the cars and the drivers,” Callum Ilott said.
“Yeah, putting it together, it’s tough. For some reason, it’s very knife edgy, lots of guys making mistakes, myself included. I had a little gravel moment.
“But yeah, it’s an interesting place. Real drivers’ track, and it’s taken it to another level this year.
“I think trying to stay — the thing with this track is if you’re under the limit and comfortable, you’re too slow. That’s why everyone is making these mistakes is it’s just enticing you to go faster and faster, and then suddenly it’s not allowing you to do the same thing as you did the lap before, and you kind of end up going off.
“But yeah, it’s rewarding to be consistent. Obviously it’s rewarding to the team, as well, to not have to be putting new parts on the car.
“But it’s tough. It’s real tough. For some reason, it’s a pain in the ass to put together a lap.”
Monterey used to be an older track surface with tons of tire fall off. Similar to Darlington in sense of low grip, high tire wear. You have to slow down to go fast. Be smooth.
Now, the entire track surface has been repaved like Road America was. How much of a role does that play. It didn’t do much to Road America as the heavy hitters were found up front still back in June.
“I think it’s identical, honestly,” Alexander Rossi said. “Yeah, the same guys that adapted to that quickly I think will adapt quickly here.”
Here though, it changes the way you drive this track. You can actually attack every corner now.
“Yeah, there’s definitely that here,” Will Power said. “Corners that are pretty high commitment. You don’t have much time to rest. It’s a pretty rhythm track. You’re always in a corner. A bit like a go-kart track. A lot of corners to get right, a lot. Easy to make a mistake. As you’ve seen the times, if you mess up one corner, moves you a lot of positions back.”
Christian Lundgaard agreed.
“The track has been resurfaced so I think everyone will come there with a new mindset of perhaps what we showed up at Road America with, setup wise,” said Lundgaard. “We were competitive there so we will likely also be at Laguna Seca.”
As a result, it’s become a quite physical track.
“It’s fast. It’s so fast. It’s incredible how heavy it is, as well,” Kyle Kirkwood said. “Like the steering effort is like astronomical, and I can only imagine with full fuel, and I’m thinking about it — thinking about yesterday, man, when we add a little bit of weight to the car, I don’t think anyone is going to be able to turn around this place.
“Yeah, it’s fast, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s cool to go there and go out and just do a lap because of how fast it is.”
Kirkwood said that there is a realistic concern about drivers retiring from the race early due to how physical this track has now become.
“It’s definitely a concern. If it’s going to be as heavy as it just was there on the alternate tires throughout the race or heavier, I think you’ll see people crash because they just can’t turn the wheel. I think that’s very possible,” he noted.
Vips Showing Strength
Prior to last weekend, Juri Vips had only tested an Indy Car twice before. He’d never raced one before and his last competitive race came a year ago. He was still solid last weekend in Portland. On Thursday and Friday in Laguna Seca, he was even better.
Vips was fourth overall on Thursday with a top time of 1:07.6366-seconds. He turned 59 total laps on the day and with 5-hours of available track time at his disposal, to be this strong could lead to a potential eye-opening performance this weekend when it counts.
That’s why despite having a mechanical issue on Friday, he was still P6. Luckiliy, he didn’t miss out on much after the failure due to all the incidents in the second half of the practice.
“Yeah, not surprising coming from Europe,” Power said of Vips’ pace. “That’s the sort of tracks those guys race on, just like this. He’s obviously a very fast driver. Yeah, I think he’ll be real good in the future.”
It’s not like it was a fluke either. His teammates were P2 (Christian Lundgaard) and P11 (Graham Rahal) on Friday and P7 and P25 on Friday.
RLL’s best results this season have come on tracks like this.
“I think we’ve all witnessed what that organization has done this year,” admitted Alexander Rossi. “Like Will said, his results and pedigree in Europe kind of speak for itself. Like Will said, this is a quintessential European track now. It’s high speed, very smooth, a lot of grip. Not like most of the places we go to.”
Strong Performance From McLaren
A day after Arrow McLaren Racing went 6-7-8 during the test, they went 2-3-19 in Friday’s 75-minute long practice.
Pato O’Ward was 5th and 8th in his two Monterey tries. He was also 4th, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 3rd and 4th on natural road courses this year too. O’Ward was P7 on Thursday and P2 on Friday.
Alexander Rossi was 6th in 2019 and 10th last year. 8th, 3rd, 10th, 10th, 5th and 20th are his natural road course finishes in 2023. He was P6 on Thursday and P3 on Friday.
Felix Rosenqvist has 2 top 5’s in 3 tries here including 4th last year. He’s also finished 9th, 5th, 20th, 25th, 27th and 2nd on natural road courses in 2023 too.
Results
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