AJ Foyt Racing duo leads Barber practice
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (Friday, April 22, 2016) – AJ Foyt Racing made a strong statement in practice for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, with drivers Takuma Sato and Jack Hawksworth clocking the fastest laps of the day to top the speed chart.
Sato, in the No. 14 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Honda, set the pace with a lap of 1 minute, 7.2157 seconds (123.186 mph) at Barber Motorsports Park that’s less than a half-second off the track record set in 2013 by Scott Dixon. Hawksworth, in the No. 41 ABC Supply AJ Foyt Racing Honda, was second at 1:07.2197 (123.178 mph).
CLICK HERE: Practice 1 results; Practice 2 results; Combined practice results
Sato, whose best start at Barber in six previous tries is sixth, credited teamwork between his and Hawksworth’s crews for taking them to the front of the leaderboard.
“Just tiny details, working on the small factors,” the 39-year-old Japanese driver said. “Jack and I divided a few problems and experimented test items, and we got everything back together, and then show the trim and the speed for the team.
“The Honda package seems to be working pretty well, so we were happy to see it, of course, and good competition out there. Extremely close to everyone else.”
Hawksworth is working this weekend with a new lead race engineer, Daniele Cucchiaroni, who served as Sato’s performance engineer in 2015. Cucchiaroni was Hawksworth’s performance engineer his rookie season in 2014 with Bryan Herta Autosport before both joined the Foyt team last year.
“This season he was working on my car as the performance engineer,” said Hawksworth, the 25-year-old Brit. “Very clever guy. We have a very good relationship. I always knew he was going to end up engineering my car at some point or another in the future. I didn’t realize it was going to be quite this soon, but it’s been good.”
The 1-2 showing had team president Larry Foyt, son of team owner and four-time Indianapolis 500 winner A.J. Foyt, beaming.
“We had a good test here in (March) and we felt like we’d be decent, so it’s nice,” said Larry Foyt, who’s also Sato’s race strategist. “The hard work over the winter seems to be translating. You’ve still got to qualify, but that was a great day. To have both cars up there is what we want.”
With James Hinchcliffe running third in the No. 5 Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports entry (1:07.2455, 123.131 mph), it gave Honda the top three cars on the speed chart. All three top laps were set in the afternoon practice on a drying track following a torrential downpour between sessions.
“It was a solid first day for us,” Hinchcliffe said. “Once again, the No. 5 Arrow Electronics car was pretty strong off the truck and we were hoping for that. We had a good test here back in February and we were hoping that was going to transfer over.”
Sebastien Bourdais, in the No. 11 Team Europa – KVSH Racing car, was the fastest Chevrolet in the 21-car field with a lap of 1:07.3399 (122.958 mph) established in the morning practice. Will Power rounded out the combined top five with a lap of 1:07.3434 (122.952 mph) this afternoon in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet.
Both practices ran incident-free, though few cars turned laps in the first half of the afternoon session, waiting for the Alabama sun to dry the surface.
A third practice is set for noon-12:45 p.m. ET Saturday (streamed live onRaceControl.IndyCar.com), the final chance for Verizon IndyCar Series entrants to dial in their cars prior to Verizon P1 Award knockout qualifying at 4 p.m. ET (NBCSN). The 90-lap race on the 2.3-mile permanent road course goes off Sunday (3 p.m. ET, NBCSN and Advance Auto Parts INDYCAR Radio Network).
The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama is the fourth of 16 races on the 2016 Verizon IndyCar Series schedule. Team Penske’s Simon Pagenaud is the current points leader with a 14-point advantage over Dixon.
Turning point for Pagenaud’s Indy car career came at Barber
Simon Pagenaud has emerged as the Verizon IndyCar Series points leader and threat for the 2016 championship following his April 17 win at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. If not for the Honda Grand Prix of Alabama five years ago, however, the fleet Frenchman may not even be here.
Pagenaud had been out of Indy cars three full seasons after finishing eighth in the standings as a Champ Car World Series rookie in 2007. He succeeded in sports car racing but yearned to get back behind the wheel of an Indy car. That opportunity came at Barber Motorsports Park in 2011, when Dreyer & Reinbold Racing tabbed him to drive the race in place of the inured Ana Beatriz.
Pagenaud impressively moved from 23rd starting position to finish eighth that day. It opened eyes in the paddock.
“That race here was probably what propelled my Indy car career,” Pagenaud said. “I don’t think I would have had a chance with Schmidt (Peterson Motorsports from 2012-14) if I didn’t have this opportunity to show what I could do here with Dreyer & Reinbold.
“I finished eighth in that race just behind Helio (Castroneves). It was amazing. We started at the back. I had never driven this car before, never been at this track, so it was an amazing weekend. Everybody was really happy.”
Pagenaud filled in later in the season for injured Justin Wilson with Dreyer & Reinbold at Mid-Ohio, then drove for HVM at Sonoma Raceway. By then, he had signed with Schmidt Peterson for 2012, a pairing that would see him win four races and finish fifth-third-fifth in the championship standings over the three seasons together.
Pagenaud moved to formidable Team Penske last season, but took time to adapt in the fourth team car. He did qualify in the top five for 13 races, including a Verizon P1 Award for the pole at Auto Club Speedway, But the results were lacking, with just a pair of third-place finishes the highlights in a 2015 season that saw him finish 11th in the championship.
The driver of the No. 22 PPG Automotive Refinish Chevrolet has been the pacesetter this season, starting with back-to-back second-place finishes at St. Petersburg and Phoenix prior to the Long Beach win. He credits much of his current success to the years of hard work leading up to it.
“The three years at Schmidt were really useful to understand the game,” he said. “Now I’m definitely in a different level, at a different level of my game. Things are a lot easier to understand. It’s just like a chess game, but it’s like if you had different rules of chess game. You just have to understand all the details before you can perfect it.
Expectations are high for returning Barber winner Newgarden
Think it’s easier returning to a racetrack after you’ve won a race there? According to Josef Newgarden, think again.
Newgarden won the 2015 Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park for his first Verizon IndyCar Series victory. Now, he said today, the presumption is he will always run up front on the 2.3-mile road course.
“People expect you to be really good when you come back,” said Newgarden, driver of the No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet. “If you won somewhere, they’re like, ‘Wow, you’re going to go back and have a really easy time, right, because you guys were good last year?’
“That’s not always the case,” he added. “Things change year to year. We’ve got differences on the Chevy side with the (aero) kit that we’ve got to figure out. Confident in that, but that’s one of the changes. And then the tires can slightly change year to year, the track can change slightly, other teams can improve or drop depending.
“So there’s a lot of things that change over season to season. I don’t think it’s a guarantee that you come back and just have a smoking-fast race car again and you go out and win. You could be 12th the next year.”
Growing up in Nashville, about three hours north of Birmingham, many consider Barber to be Newgarden’s home track, “which is fine with me,” he said.
“I grew up in Nashville and this was one of the tracks when I was a kid. Kid? I was 16, 17. But when I was racing junior formula cars, this was one of my favorite tracks. I loved running Skip Barber cars around here. I always thought it was just a blast.
“It’s close to home. It’s one of my favorites, the place where I got my first win. It’s going to be a very special track, I think, for me forever.”
Verizon IndyCar Series rookies share new experience at NASA Space Camp
Conor Daly and Alexander Rossi are Verizon IndyCar Series rookies, so many racing experiences this year are new to them. But the American pair experienced a whole new thrill in a visit Thursday to the U.S. Rocket and Science Center in Huntsville, Ala., about 120 miles from Barber Motorsports Park, site of this weekend’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
CLICK HERE: Watch a video of the Space Camp visit
The two Sunoco Rookie of the Year contenders experienced a day at “Space Camp” as astronauts that included landing an Orion capsule on the Martian moon Phobos, donning spacesuits to work in zero gravity and repairing the space station. They even took a turn on a multi-access trainer that spun and flipped them around and took an up-close look at the Saturn V rocket that helped power NASA astronauts to the moon.
“If it was possible to have any more respect for (astronauts) than I already do, I definitely gained that today,” said Rossi, driver of the No. 98 Castrol Edge/Curb Honda for Andretti Herta Autosport with Curb-Agajanian. “It’s a pretty crazy thing with very small margins of error. It was a spectacular experience and I’m glad we got to be here today.”
Daly joked he prepared for his visit to Space Camp at by watching “The Martian,” the 2015 feature film and Academy Award nominee for best picture starring Matt Damon as an astronaut left behind on Mars.
“I loved being here,” said Daly, driver of the No. 18 Jonathan Byrd’s Hospitality Honda for Dale Coyne Racing. “I really wanted to go to space before I came here, and now I really want to go even more. It’s so cool. I love everything about NASA and the idea of space travel. It was a really fun experience.”
Dixon’s crew wins Firestone Pit Stop Performance Award at Long Beach
With a total accumulated pit-lane time of 1 minute, 15.26 seconds, the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing crew for Scott Dixon won the Firestone Pit Stop Performance Award during the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. The No. 9 crew – nicknamed “The Wolfpack” – will receive its $10,000 award during prerace festivities Sunday at the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
Sources: Mike Kitchel/Verizon IndyCar Series PR