By Jerry Jordan, Editor
AUSTIN, TX – Team Penske’s Will Power continued his dominance on permanent road courses with the fastest laps in practice Friday for this weekend’s IndyCar Classic at Circuit of the Americas.
With most expecting rain Saturday, Power said he wasn’t worried, and wanted to see what his car would do on the 20-turn, 3.41-mile course just minutes from the Texas capitol. He pushed his average speed at 114.250 mph, which was more than a tenth of a second faster than the combined practice speed efforts by Felix Rosenqvist. Power added that this time on the track is different when the series tested here earlier this year and that has forced some changes to the car.
Yeah, it’s funny. You can do all these miles in testing, come back, and it’s different for the race.,” Power said. “Definitely running a different package to what I ran at the test. So, yeah, we’ll just keep massaging on it. It’s going to be tight, it always is.
“It’s a difficult track, very technical, hard to get the car right. I felt like we got in a pretty good window that session. Felt like we found where we need to be.”
Power is also intrigued by one of the final turns on the course, saying it’s “interesting.” He was referring to Turn 19, which comes up pretty quickly after a long sweeping right turn around the iconic tower at COTA.
“Turn 19 is obviously just interesting,” Power said. “You have to use the rule to be fast.”
With forecasters predicting a 40-percent chance of rain for Saturday and clearing on Sunday, Power felt like the weekend would be good for racing and there were already a lot of fans at the track for Friday’s practice session.
“I think the weather looks pretty good actually. We will have a nice weekend,” he said.
For his practice efforts, Rosenqvist was positive about the track. It’s the first time IndyCar has ever raced at the facility and he was bullish on what fans could expect. He did explain that because COTA is so challenging it will be hard for drivers to get their cars perfect and that everyone will have to go with what works best for them.
“I really like this place,” Rosenqvist said. “COTA is a track that has a lot of different characteristics in one lap, actually. It has high-speed areas and some very low-speed areas. You need a car that is good everywhere, to be honest. You can’t be happy everywhere and you have to have a setup with a lot of compromise. We’re happy with the setup so far with the NTT DATA car and will keep working on it.”
Qualifying for Sunday’s race begins at 2 p.m. CST on NBCSN.