Pato O’Ward was left looking for solutions after qualifying tenth for Sunday’s XPEL Grand Prix at Highway America.
The 27-year-old Mexican, who presently sits fifth within the IndyCar Collection championship standings, clocked a flying lap of 1m,44.4003s across the 4.014-mile, 14-turn pure terrain street course. It was a major drop from his pace-setting time of 1m44.0029s in second follow on Saturday morning, the place he was the one driver to exit an try a run on a set of softer alternate tires.
When interviewed by FOX Sports activities, O’Ward admitted the technique to run alternates in follow helped them dial within the stability of his #5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet early on, however that knowledge seemingly went out the window when the qualifying started.
Pato O’Ward, Arrow McLaren
Picture by: Geoff Miller / Lumen through Getty Photographs
“It helped me simply get a greater stability on the place the automotive was debating on whether or not we perhaps ought to have gone black [harder primary compound] there,” O’Ward mentioned.
“It is simply… the tires have been so wonky from one set to a different, just like the automotive has remodeled utterly from utilizing two units of softs, however even a number of (drivers) like (Alex) Palou misplaced six tenths from Q1 to Q2. I misplaced three tenths, three and a half tenths. It’s totally unusual, very, very unusual. We knew this mushy tire was already working fairly bizarre in comparison with the place the prime was.
“Yeah, I usually thought we had slightly bit extra to provide there to struggle at the least. However I used to be simply skating on the market. Simply the automotive was sliding round rather a lot. And I do not actually suppose that the observe has modified a lot as a way to have that, these points as exponential as they have been. So it seems like we’re not the one one. Even (Will) Energy, I feel, misplaced six tenths from Q1 to Q2 on the identical set of contemporary tires. So I do not know.”
Pato O’Ward, Arrow McLaren
Picture by: Penske Leisure
With a 55-lap race forward, there may be nonetheless loads of optimism for O’Ward, who has two podium finishes in his earlier eight begins on the observe based mostly in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.
“At this level, all we will do is admittedly simply try to maximize what we predict we’d like for the race,” O’Ward mentioned. “And, , to date it has been a really easy weekend. However, yeah, I simply say each time that you simply put a brand new set of softs on, it looks like a coin toss of what you get from the automotive. So we simply have to put our heads down for tomorrow and struggle our manner ahead as greatest we will.”
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