Chevrolet Indycar at Road America: Team Chevy Practice One Recap
Chevrolet Indycar at Road America: Team Chevy Practice One Recap
DATE
June 11, 2024
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Chevrolet had five drivers involved in a back-and-forth first practice session at Road America for the XPEL Grand Prix, in which the top 10 drivers in the final order were only separated by five-tenths of a second.
Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet, was the top Chevrolet-powered driver with a lap of one minute, 43.3618 seconds around the four-mile/14-turn track. Josef Newgarden, behind the wheel of his No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet, was only two-hundredths behind Ferrucci in the final order
Team Chevy was represented by five in the top 10 at the conclusion of the first practice session, including Ferrucci; Newgarden; Will Power, No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet; Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 Team Penske Chevrolet and Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet
Saturday, June 8, Team Chevy drivers took to the track for a second practice, qualifying, and the Firestone Fast Six for Sunday’s race at Road America
SANTINO FERRUCCI – First Practice Press Conference:
Moderator: Good afternoon, everyone. Santino Ferrucci, driver of the No. 14 AJ Foyt Sexton Property Chevrolet. Santino, what are your thoughts on a good start to the weekend for you?
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, actually, I love this track. Always enjoyed coming here. Been here as a spectator before, as well. Was at Siebkens last night bartending for Racing For Kids.
Moderator: Raising money.
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, raising money. It’s been a great week. We had a good car here last year with the team. We made some adjustments to kind of find some of the areas we were missing. We’re pretty competitive. So I feel good about it.
Moderator: Sound start to the weekend. We’ll begin with questions.
Question: What has changed within the program? There is the Penske alliance. How much different does it feel this year compared to last year?
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, obviously, I think if you look at our results, too, we have four top 10s in six races on all tracks now, so street, road, and oval. It’s been a much easier, I want to say, way of rolling off of the hauler. So we unroll pretty quick. Last year, we were actually competitive here, which was nice. We were able to take some of that and mix it in with our Penske alliance. Obviously, we get some dampers from them. So, putting everything together, we have a pretty good car.
I actually feel very comfortable because it’s a car I’ve been in before. I’m not trying to learn something new for the first time this weekend as far as setup goes. It’s a very similar car off of Barber, as well. We’re starting to find the sweet spot for me because I don’t drive quite like the other three drivers or like my teammate. It’s been a bit of a learning curve. It’s nice to be quick off the trailer (smiling).
Question: You referenced you’re ahead of a couple of your teammates which insinuates the Penske bit. What does it mean for you confidence-wise, even with the alliance, it’s your team that’s ahead of the Penskes with the same dampers?
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, no, they’re not quite the same. They’re close. But with their help, we’ve been able to do as well as them. It’s very hard to beat a team like Penske. I mean, they won quite a few races already this year. So to be just as quick as them or even, for this reference, quicker, it feels really good for how small our team is. Still part of that speed is due to James Schnabel, who is a Penske employee, my race engineer, and them helping us out. It’s pretty cool.
Question: Obviously a lot less tension today versus last week. Alex called this a proper racetrack. Are you echoing those comments right now?
Santino Ferrucci: Depends on your definition of a ‘proper racetrack.’ No street course, in my mind, is a proper race course. They’re all very unique, very different. I would say Detroit has definitely had its challenges. I love street racing, I really do. It was a very tough weekend for not just us but for INDYCAR at Detroit, starting to understand how it works for us. We had a lot of cautions.
This is what you would consider as a permanent track. One of the greatest tracks, in my opinion, across the globe, not just in the series. This is probably one of the coolest. Also, it’s a true racetrack, in my opinion. What I mean by that is it’s not a paved parking lot that you see a lot of the other series that’s (indiscernible). You make a mistake here, you go off, and there’s something to hit. It’s high stakes, high reward. The carousel has to be one of the coolest corners in motorsports.
Question: Any fence mending in the last week? You were a little bit upset at some other guys… How does that work over the last week and today?
Santino Ferrucci: Helio and I had a great chat on the grid, with helmets on and helmets off, walking down the grid. I have a ton of respect for him and a ton of respect for Meyer Shank.
I feel horrible about what happened with those guys.
Obviously, moving forward, I just want to be true to myself and who I am. I think that’s important for my moral values and for my team. This is a new week, man. We’re going to treat it as is. We’ve been fighting for top 10s up until now. I’d like to be fighting for a win.
Question: The pace of this practice was about two seconds off of last year. Was that what you expected after the repave? Seems like we had a bunch of offs. Some correlation between those?
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, I think with the repave last year, the track had this peak of grip, which was phenomenal for our cars. I mean, it was incredibly fast.
Obviously, you guys have tough winters up here, to say the least. I’m from Connecticut. When we’re in the middle of summer, and I have a hoodie on, I can’t imagine what it’s like here in December and January.
When we saw the practice with the Indy Lights, the Pro 2000 Series, and the USF Pro, we saw they were about a second off. We figured we’d be a little bit slower. We didn’t quite know what the car balance would be like. But yeah, the conditions are incredibly technical. Honestly, it makes it a lot of fun.
Question: (No microphone.)
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, I mean, I had my fair share of dropping wheels, too, flying through the dirt, especially coming onto the main straight. I think everyone will agree the balance of the cars is probably pretty snappy right now.
For me, I love driving an oversteer race car. If you looked at my steering trace, you’d think it was not real. I’m definitely very happy and that has a lot to do with it.
Question: This is obviously the fifth successive weekend of cars being on track. How much of a challenge is this congested period? What have you and your team done to manage that?
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, obviously, I think rolling off of Indy and into Detroit was mentally tiring, I think for everybody. You’re going into a tight street course. I think having a couple of days to rest and sleep, I finally got more than eight hours at home this week, which was awesome. To come up here and do a full reset, I feel like I have a lot more energy. I can see it in the team. My Texas guys got to go back to Houston. I was very happy about that.
Yeah, racing immediately after Indy is always tough. It would be nice to have the week off. Obviously with the sports this year, it’s very technical to do. With TV, there’s a lot of things behind the scenes that we don’t unfortunately get the benefit of.
But, yeah, I think everybody’s looking forward to getting through this race weekend, going through the Milwaukee test, then sitting at home on the couch (smiling).
Question: Obviously, we know about the Penske alliance. Do you put your racing results down to continuity within the team? You’ve been able to hold onto a lot of people and team personnel that you had last year. You have Mike Cannon back, as well.
Santino Ferrucci: Yeah, I think a lot of that has to do with it. The little things throughout the race weekend, we’re trying to minimize. We made a lot of mistakes every race weekend last year, not just from my standpoint but from procedural stuff. Working through all that, tuning that all out, and having a proper go this year, we’ve come a long way.
We’ve been maximizing track time. I think we had a bit of a rocky start trying to maximize our track time. Once we got to Barber, we were pretty good. We had our faults at Indy, which is unfortunate. Our road and street course weekends have been a lot cleaner as a whole. We’ve been on track, making the correct setup changes on the pit lane. I think that shows into our continuity.
Moderator: Appreciate your time. Thanks for coming over. Good luck tomorrow.
Santino Ferrucci: Thank you.