Fast Friday sees the BorgWarner turbos on the Chevrolet and Honda engines turned up from 1.3- to 1.5-bar, an increase of approximately 80hp, to enable the teams to strip out drag-inducing downforce and check out their qualifying potential for this weekend.
But today, wind gusts of up to 38mph have been registered, and they are giving the cars a headwind down the front straight, pinning the nose and therefore provoking oversteer at Turn 1, and then pushing the cars into a drift through Turn 2 before they head off down the back straight with a tail-wind. That push helped the Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet of Conor Daly trip the Turn 3 speedtrap at 243.724mph, but like so many others, he didn’t complete a full quali sim.
The 2016 Indy 500 winner Rossi lapped the course in 38.8127sec, a speed of 231.883mph, but bailed out of the run after just a single flyer.
However, O’Ward stuck at it for a full four laps, and despite dropping from 231.798mph to 227.854mph over the course of four laps, he set an average of 230.111mph. Second fastest has been remarkable rookie David Malukas in the Dale Coyne Racing with HMD-Honda, while third is four-time and defending Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves of Meyer Shank Racing-Honda.
In terms of one-lap pace, Rossi heads two-time Indy winner Takuma Sato in the Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda, O’Ward, Marcus Ericsson of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda, Malukas, 2013 winner Tony Kanaan (Ganassi), and then the three Team Penske-Chevrolets.
Speaking to Peacock livestreaming service, O’Ward said: “There’s a big fall-off from one lap to another – at least for us it was that way. We can pull out a quick lap – but four of those? Not so much.
“What we’re looking for is to make the car more consistent from a balance perspective from one lap to four laps. I don’t think the wind is helping, I don’t think the track temp [122degF] is helping.
“I think tomorrow is going to be quite different – less wind. I haven’t seen what the temperature is gonna be, but it’ll be different to today. I don’t think today is gonna get much better.
“I’m glad that we got it. It wasn’t the cleanest of runs, but I think we were one of the first cars to complete four laps and we have seen where it goes to. It’s a bit terrifying! [The conditions] are just very unpredictable… Last year we saw that with many cars but it wasn’t that drastic.
“You’ve got to treat these like planes – you’re going way too fast to not take into consideration all the wind direction. The balance of the car is shifting massively from one end of the track to the other; in other words you have to be very proactive with what you can move around in the car.
“But you’re sort of guessing sometimes because you don’t really know where it’s going until you get a full run and can really see where it went. So now you’re better prepared.
“But that first run… it was decently hairy!”
Track action continues until 6.00pm although as the wind continues to blow around Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the number of cars venturing out is sparse.
This evening will see the numbers drawn for the order of the first qualifying runs tomorrow.
