INDIANAPOLIS — Heading into qualifying later this afternoon, the pair of Penske Porsche 963’s look like favorites to take the pole. A day after the No. 7 Porsche Penske Motorsports entry driven by Matt Campbell and Felipe Nasr went P1 on Friday, they did so again on Saturday morning. Campbell went 1:14.085-seconds to give the car a sweep of the speed charts at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway this weekend.
In much cooler conditions, the lap time was not only the quickest of the weekend, but also faster than the four sessions during July’s test too. How much of that plays a role into things for qualifying could be something to watch as conditions are nearly 30-degrees cooler this morning than it was in July and about 10 degrees cooler than Friday.
The other Porsche driven by Mathieu Jaminet and Nick Tandy were .185-seconds arrears on an overcast Saturday morning. Their top lap was 1:14.270-seconds in the No. 6 Porsche 963 prototype. They were P8 on Friday, so it was a vastly improved practice out of this group.
A Penske win in Sunday’s TireRack.com Battle on the Bricks (1 p.m. ET, NBC) would give the Captain an Indy 500 win and IMSA win in the same year here.
The pair of BMW M Team RLL cars were P3 and P4 with Philipp Eng and Augusto Farfus being third (1:14.550-seconds) in the No. 24 BMW M Hybrid V8. Their team car, the No. 25 BMW M Hybrid V8 driven by Connor De Phillippi and Nick Yelloly was P4 at 1:14.562-seconds.
The duo was P4 (No. 25 entry) and P5 (No. 24 entry) on Friday.
Sebastien Bourdais and Renger van der Zande (1:14.603-seconds) rounded out the top five. They were third on Friday.
