| CHEVROLET IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES CHEVROLET DETROIT GRAND PRIX STREETS OF DETROIT DETROIT, MICHIGAN TEAM CHEVY FRIDAY PRACTICE MAY 30, 2025 Chevrolet-powered drivers Scott McLaughlin in the No. 3 TireRack.comTeam Penske Chevrolet, Will Power in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet and Christian Lundgaard in the No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet held spots in the top five of Friday’s first practice on the tight 1.645-mile, 10-turn, downtown Detroit street circuit, in the shadow of General Motors global headquarters. David Malukas, in No. 4 Clarience Technologies Chevrolet (A.J. Foyt Racing), was the quickest driver in the full field session, where the drivers utilized the harder Firestone primary tires (Blacks) with a lap at 62.819 seconds, with McLaughlin and Newgarden were also in the top four. To decrease traffic during the driver’s runs on the softer Firestone alternate tires (Greens), the field was split into two and given 12 minutes to complete a quick lap. Power, Newgarden and Lundgaard were the fastest in the first portion, while the second portion saw McLaughlin and Pato O’Ward in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet second and third quickest. Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear Friday Practice Results: |
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| Tune-In Alert SaturdayNTT INDYCAR SERIES Practice #2 – 9am (ET)/8am (CT)/7am (MT)/6am (PT) – FS1/INDYCAR Radio Network/SIRIUSXM 218 NTT INDYCAR SERIES Qualifying – noon (ET)/11am (CT)/10am (MT)/9am (PT) – FS1/INDYCAR Radio Network/SIRIUSXM 218 SundayNTT INDYCAR SERIES Warm Up – 9:30am (ET)/8:30am (CT)/7:30am (MT)/6:30am (PT) – FS1/INDYCAR Radio Network/SIRIUSXM 218Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix (85 laps) – 12:30pm (ET)/11:30am (CT)/10:30am (MT)/9:30am (PT) – FOX/INDYCAR Radio Network/SIRIUSXM 218 WHAT THEY’RE SAYING (QUOTES): A.J. FOYT RACING David Malukas, No. 4 Clarience Technologies Chevrolet: “It seems that the momentum from the five hundred and indy, the whole month of may, i think we did a good job building the chemistry with the team, and it seems like we’re carrying that momentum here in detroit. We had a good session, obviously, very tough to get track time and try to put it all together. but overall, i thought we were fast. Kind of hard to tell roughly where we’re at, since I think a lot of guys are struggling to get laps in but that’s just the characteristic of Detroit, so very happy to start off this weekend and we’ll carry it into tomorrow.” Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 Sexton Properties / A.J. Foyt Racing Chevrolet: “Okay. Honestly, nice to be back in Detroit, you know, we were just very locked down with the Chevy. Other than that, I’m pretty happy with a bunch of other changes we made, I think we know what the big thing is coming into free practice two tomorrow. Should be fun.” ARROW MCLAREN Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet: “Back in bumpy Detroit, and we need to make the car a little bit better in the window for Qualifying. We’ll see what we can make better overnight.” Nolan Siegel, No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet: “Practice 1 was a bit hectic. We’re back in the swing of things on the street course. I don’t think our pace is bad. I didn’t really do a lap on the Firestone Alternates, at least not a lap that I was happy with. No concerns for the rest of the weekend. I think we’ll figure it out. There is pace in the car. I just need to put it altogether. It’s my first time in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES here, so I’ll give myself a learning session, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow.” Christian Lundgaard, No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet: “At the end of the day, we have a really good package. We’ve had a good package all year. We’ve scored very good points. We’re third in the championship, coming off a career best Indy (500). We’re here to be competitive once again and that’s our main goal. I think my Chevy feels great. We had a good morning session here. I think that’s the first time this year we’ve rolled off relatively competitive, so I think there is a lot of positives to come for the rest of the weekend.” PREMA Robert Shwartzman, No. 83 PREMA Racing Chevrolet: “I have completed the first free practice here in Detroit. The first free practice for me at this track. I had quite a bit of fun. I finally managed to do a full practice session, which was the first achievement. Later on, we tried a few things. Getting used to the bumps, the turns. Overall, we’re not as bad as I would expect. I think we can have some good potential. Obviously, not with the top, top guys, but to battle in the mid (pack), we can have a chance. Overall, it went pretty decent. We need to have a look at the data. Overall the car and engine felt really good. Thanks Chevy for that. The car overall feels quite good, we just need to find the way to tune it a bit better for the bumps. Hopefully, the car will be a bit faster tomorrow.” Callum Ilott, No, 90 PREMA Racing Chevrolet: “Overall, a good start to the weekend. The car felt good straightaway and we were able to make quick improvements with the car on the damper side and some other little things. Over the bumps, that is the main thing to get right. I think the team has done a good job and the Chevy engine pulls quite well down the straight. Let’s see what we can do tomorrow.” TEAM PENSKE Scott McLaughlin, No. 3 TireRack.com Team Penske Chevrolet: “Pretty solid day for us in the TireRack.com Chevy. We went through our paces and went through our laps and we’ve got a pretty good car. I really want to do this for Chevy on their home ground.” Will Power, No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet: “The Verizon Chevy was very good on the softer tire. Struggled a bit on blacks to get it exactly right. Yeah. Big, big difference. The soft tires are not bad. They lasted three, four laps, like, pushing really hard. So maybe that bodes well for the race. You can actually use them. The first two street courses we’ve done, they’ve degraded a lot, but that didn’t feel terrible. That may be okay. But my car is certainly better on reds. We just have to work out what to do for blacks. There’s always a lot of traffic here, a lot of chaos.” David MalukasPress Conference THE MODERATOR: David Malukas, driver of the No. 4 Clarience Technologies Chevrolet for AJ Foyt Enterprises. Sunday will mark his third Detroit GP, P1 in that alt car session to lead things off here this weekend. Car acting well, are you happy so far? DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, I’m really happy. We managed to get some laps in the beginning. It’s a bit tough to kind of judge where we are compared to everybody else because I think everybody is struggling to get laps. But we got a good lap in, and the lap time was there at the start.Second time around, we were struggling, but I also kind of flew off the track a couple times and didn’t myself.But I think we’re in a happy spot and very comfortable with the car. Q. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more? Seemed like Turn 1 got you twice.DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, so actually it was kind of just driver error. I started losing the rears on the primaries, so ended up having a moment initially there, so I moved the bias more to the rear because I locked the fronts on the primaries, but then we put the alternates on and then i locked the rears because I never put it back.Yeah, learned my lesson. I think I’ve done that too many times now, so that was kind of the issue we won.Overall, yeah, we’re kind of trying to judge the movement going from primaries to alternates. Didn’t really get that right. We were looking at that first group, seemed like people were taking a little bit of time to get it up to temp and get that peak tire, but for us it kind of came in immediately and we weren’t really expecting that, so caught us off guard. Q. Is it frustrating when you can only get one lap in during that session? Maybe it’s your fault, maybe it’s other people’s fault, but is it frustrating to only have that one lap on those tires?DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, but it’s kind of just how it’s going to be for qualifying and how it’s kind of been for the street courses.Yeah, it’s frustrating, but it’s kind of been like that so far this season, so… Q. They went back to the original tire rules. There was that change for Indy Grand Prix. Does it matter to you?DAVID MALUKAS: I think it’s just I prefer the way it is now because I feel like in Indy GP they were kind of cutting us a little bit from options when it comes to race strategy, forcing those rules.But I think here having the option to choose what we want for the race is preferable. Q. In recent years, this track has been known to create some mayhem. Do you see more or less happening this Sunday?DAVID MALUKAS: Well, with this season, it seems like everything has been a lot less when it comes to yellows. But I’ll be surprised if there’s not going to be a yellow for this race. It’s very — with the way it’s set up, Turn 1, it’s very wide on entry and it looks inviting and then all of a sudden it gets very, very tight on the exit, and it happens a lot around this track.It’s going to be — we’ll see. I’m not going to say anything because I’ve been saying and looking at data and the data says 100 percent chance that it’s not going to be a yellow, and we do setups for it and then there isn’t a yellow and then there is a yellow, and then the data has been incorrect with how it’s been this year. So I don’t know what to say. Q. Also they’ve changed the start zone. What do you think of that?DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, I think it’s better. Kyle reached out to me, and I think all the drivers have got to give some feedback beforehand. I think it’s a good change, and obviously we’ll see how it goes when we get on track. Q. Can you just kind of elaborate on that and describe the challenge of this track, how you manage the bumps, obviously the narrowness of it? How hard is this place to drive around, especially coming from Indy to here and the reset that you’ve got to make?DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, it’s very difficult. Thankfully I went on the simulator before coming here and did over 100 laps to kind of prepare for it just because I know that transition is very tough from previous years, going for a whole month on an oval and now coming to I think one of the most technical courses for us.I had a little bit of preparation beforehand but it’s just so tough because the way this track is, all the bumps tend to be mid to out when you’re trying to accelerate, and those bumps throw you what is a wall.It gets very tough, especially entering 8 where the alt start line is. That bump is a big one and it’s very aggressive, so I think it’s catching a lot of people off guard. That’s kind of the one that we’re heavily focused on, but that’s just the general layout of this entire track is all the exits are a little bit more those bumps.But yeah, I enjoy it. The margin for error is very small. Q. Obviously a really strong 500, but the season before that maybe hadn’t been where we’d seen the team last year on the Santino side. What are the improvements that maybe had to be made from those first five rounds of the season, and are you confident now, especially with the momentum coming from the 500 that a bit of an upswing can be seen?DAVID MALUKAS: I’ve kind of said throughout the start of the entire season that we really are looking forward to the month of May because we’re with the team for the entire month. We can really build on the car and work on the chemistry of each other and really understand what we want and start building some momentum for the second half of the season.I feel like that’s kind of what’s happened, and it’s something that I’ve experienced on my first year in INDYCAR where really things didn’t turn around for me until the month of May. That’s just kind of being with a new team, how it is. We’ve made really good improvements with the setup and different things that we wanted throughout the month of May, and I think it’s going to be shown for us this week. Q. I’m pretty sure you were the car that Power and Kirkwood went past during their little incident?DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, that was really cool. Q. What was your view of that?DAVID MALUKAS: I mean, for a second, getting back in the car, for me it just felt like I was back playing iRacing or rFactor. I was like, yeah, I’d totally do that in a video game. It was pretty cool to see him just push Ericsson, and actually in my peripheral vision, because Ericsson went off and Power just blasted through, and I just drove by and I just see Ericsson’s hand like going in the air, like, what the hell is going on.But it was interesting to see. I couldn’t believe it. I was very confused at the start. I thought something was wrong with Ericsson and Power was towing him across like the “Cars” movie. It was interesting at first but then I realized it was not that, so… Q. Can you elaborate maybe on the dust issue? Is that kind of the nature of street circuits, or is it maybe the time of day —DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, I keep coughing right now because there’s a bunch of dust inside of me. Yeah, it’s always the first session just with the air tube coming in. There’s just a lot of dust and cleaning that we have to do. Unfortunately that dust comes off of that car and goes straight into that tube and straight into my face. That’s the one downside to having the Darth Vader mask, but I only have that issue for the first practice session, and then the rest I just look really cool. Q. David, at St. Pete the tires for the alternates were the ones that the drivers said were one-lap wonders, and in terms of getting up to speed and then the speed falling off after one lap in qualifying, what do you think they’re going to be like here? Is it a similar situation?DAVID MALUKAS: I think so. We were thinking it was maybe going to take a little bit longer, but it seemed for us it was coming in pretty fast, so I think it’s going to be something very similar. Q. David, to go back to the whole dust thing, is it exacerbated here because you have IMSA and INDY NXT? At St. Pete you have all different Road to Indy series, MX-5 Cup, limited running here from everybody else to help clean up the track beforehand, quote-unquote?DAVID MALUKAS: Yeah, I mean, that could probably be it, yeah. But I don’t really know. All I know is there’s a lot of dust going in my face, so… |