| CHEVROLET IN NTT INDYCAR SERIES THE THERMAL CLUB INDYCAR GRAND PRIX THE THERMAL CLUB THERMAL, CALIFORNIA TEAM CHEVY RACE PRACTICE ONE MARCH 21, 2025 CHEVROLET POWERED DRIVERS SHOW STRENGTH IN FIRST PRACTCE AT THE THERMAL CLUB· Drivers representing all six of the Chevrolet INDYCAR teams took turns in the 80-minute (65 minutes of track time) practice session in preparation for Firestone Fast Six qualifying on Saturday· Christian Rasmussen, No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet, led the charge for Team Chevy with a fast lap of one minute, 40:8728 seconds around the 3.067-mile/17-turn natural road course· Pato O’Ward, No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, Scott McLaughlin, No 3 Team Penske Chevrolet, Will Power, No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet and Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 AJ Foyt Chevrolet showed solid performance and speed during the session· Robert Shwartman , No. 83 PREMA Chevrolet, suffered a fuel cell technical issue that caused a fire forcing the team to go to a back-up car· The Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix on Saturday sees Practice 2 at 1 p.m. ET, with qualifying and the Firestone Fast Six at 5 p.m. ET, both on FS1. Sunday’s race day opens then with a warm-up session on FS1 at 11 a.m. ET. The 65-lap, 199.36-mile main event takes the green flag live with new NTT INDYCAR SERIES partner FOX on Sunday live at 3 p.m. ET. All practice and qualifying sessions broadcast with INDYCAR Radio and SiriusXM Channel 218. |
| WHAT THEY’RE SAYING:Robert Shwartzman, No. 83 PREMA Chevrolet: “From my side, from the cockpit, I was driving and immediately lost power, then I had a fuel alarm pop up. I was like ‘Okay, something is wrong.’ Then all of a sudden the car restarted. It brought back the engine power, and I thought maybe everything was fine. I just started going slowly, taking it easy, then at some point I heard a hit, like a pop. Like a little hit on the back and then immediately I felt the seat heating up and I looked in the mirror and saw smoke and fire coming. So I knew I needed to immediately stop the car. I stopped the car and jumped out. From the outside, it didn’t look that bad, at least the fire was not massive. It was good the guys were quick to operate to save the car, so hopefully it’s not big damage and that we can rebuild the car for tomorrow. It’s not helpful, this situation, because it’s the second race weekend we have another problem that’s compromising our driving time, but it is what it is. It happens. What can I do about it? From tomorrow, it’s going to be my job to do the best job possible.” Santino Ferrucci, No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet: “I just love being out here at Thermal. It’s great to be here with Chevrolet, Sexton Properties, and the AJ Foyt team. Surrounded by all these beautiful homes, palm trees and sunny skies, man. I’m loving it. We’ve been struggling with understeer. It’s a common thread with this car just with the way we’re going with the weight and everything. You’ve got to learn how to adapt. That’s a part of being a racecar driver. You’ve got to adapt. So we upped the caster. Give it some more steering weight. Give it some more mid-corner, hopefully. I may be small, but I hit the gym. I feel really great about it. Like I said, the (tire) deg here is going be pretty awesome. I think Firestone has brought us a great tire to run. It’ll be a fun strategy race.” Josef Newgarden, No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet: “I think you’re going to get big degradation. This is like old school Laguna before the repave a couple of years ago, which is very fun. I know most drivers, including myself, really enjoyed that. I think the tires are acting differently here than they did in St. Pete. We’re back on a road course but this exhibits street course characteristics, if you will. What I mean by this is the red may be more preferred, so the alternate compared to St. Pete where we really liked the primary. I think that’s going to be question mark is what we’re going to use more often this weekend. But I think degradation is definitely going to be the topic. It’s how well does the car look after things, where do you start, what’s the undercut situation, in and out laps. That’s where you’re going to win or lose this race, just like where Laguna (Seca) used to be.” Conor Daly, No. 76 Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet:“Well, I think it was really nice to get back out there and get some changes in. The track certainly is it’s a challenge, and I think it’s going to present everyone a couple of new battles with how the weight distribution is now. But I was really happy with how we progressed through the session and picked up a huge amount of time on the reds. Made a little mistake the last corner that cost us a couple of tenths, but good knowledge, good learning for us. Excited for tomorrow to keep going.” Sting Ray, No. 77 Juncos Hollinger Chevrolet:”First day here at Thermal, I think, went smoothly. Not a lot of track time with red flags and another car catching on fire, but I think that we rolled off with a decent package. There’s still some room to go. I think that we’re a bit closer on time sheets than I think we should be, but that’s a good problem to have. I’m optimistic for the qualifying tomorrow, and I’m excited to see what other options we can get going for the car going faster but it looks good and feels good.” Nolan Siegel, No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet: “Overall, I think it was a positive start and our pace on new Firestone Alternate tires was pretty strong. We know what we need to work on. We have a lot of understeer that we’ll need to sort out but it’s comfortable. It’s my first time racing in St. Pete in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES, and this is one of my favorite tracks and I’m very excited for the weekend. Off to a strong and positive start and I think we’ll get better from here and be in good shape for Qualifying.” Christian Lundgaard, No. 7 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet: “For our first go, I think we’re okay. We’re obviously building up to it. We don’t really know what the track condition is compared to last year since St. Pete was a bit under water last fall. I think we’ve identified a few things that we were concerned about leaving Sebring. Some of them translated, some of them didn’t. We still have some work to do, but overall it was a good first run. I’m looking forward to hearing what the others have to say in terms of where we are from an overall balance and overall performance perspective. It’s good to get running.” NTT INDYCAR SERIES News ConferenceFriday, March 21, 2025Scott McLaughlinPato O’WardPress Conference THE MODERATOR: Wrapping up P1 this weekend of the Thermal Club INDYCAR Grand Prix here at beautiful Thermal Club. Joining us is Scott McLaughlin, as is Pato O’Ward, Q. What did you learn from that practice tire-wise, Scott? SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I just want to acknowledge that we’re watching NHRA in the INDYCAR press conference. At the end of the day it was, I haven’t been here for a while, nice to get out and have a feel for it. The track is in pretty good nick, I thought, compared year on year. And all the changes they’ve done to Thermal Club, honestly, you have to thank them because they’ve put a lot of work in, pit lane and all that stuff and on track. But yeah, felt good. Played around with some settings on the engine side, and I think we’re okay. Q. Pato, I was asking these guys about what they learned tire-wise from this opening practice. I know that’ll be a big determining factor for how this race goes on Sunday. What did you think you learned from the tire life you’ll get out of the primaries and how many stops we’ll see on Sunday? PATO O’WARD: Ooh, it’s still a cheese grater. We just need to look at the data, really. I think it was a bit different for each of our cars. But yeah, the common denominator is that the DEG is going to be big. I would see it like an Iowa — like an old Iowa kind of thing, I would say, but I can’t road course. Hard to pinpoint it. Q. Did the changes in Turn 17 to the curb, were those good? SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I think I’m still airborne. Are you? PATO O’WARD: Yeah, we’re still jumping. Yeah. I thought it felt a little bit better. SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Oh, for sure better. More raceable. PATO O’WARD: We’re still catching some air. SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: That’s cool. PATO O’WARD: Yeah, we feel it. Q. For Scott, watching the practice, obviously, it looks quite difficult during the race in traffic for overtaking. What’s your opinion in traffic situations? Is there a safe place to overtake or do you have to stay patient? SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I’ve said it a lot during the week to my guys. I actually think it’s going to race a lot like the old Laguna Seca in some ways, quite a high deg track. We’ll probably play that patience game a little bit. Traditionally, last year was hard because we ran the same set of tires over two races almost, so you were kind of saving the tire for the first half and then making sure that you had enough if there was a late yellow. But this year, obviously, with pit stops and stuff, you want to make some — obviously, when there’s degradation in some spots, it’s as many as you probably thought there would be on a big, big track, but I think with the tire degradation it’ll create opportunities that you may not normally pass someone on the same speed. But yeah. Q. Pato and Scott, you guys obviously had Felipe test here for Penske and I think Enzo for Arrow McLaren. I know it wasn’t the same thing as being here, but does having that little bit of extra data help you this weekend? SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I guess you could see the track year on year how it’s looking, but yeah, it’s hard because when you have a test like that, there’s only probably three or four cars running around, so the track is probably not as right. But it gave us an idea of where it’s at, at least our team, and it was nice to have three-point do some laps here? PATO O’WARD: Yeah, it’s a track that’s very sensitive to temperature. So like Colton said, they were like 30 degrees cooler and the track temp was definitely a lot nicer then. I can’t remember what you guys were running, but it was definitely quicker than what we were with the old tire, stuff like that. It’s just very sensitive to those differences. Yeah, I’m curious to see what it’s going to do in P2 and then back into qualifying. I think there’s going to be such a shift from one to the other. Q. Pato, how are you finding TK as team principal? PATO O’WARD: How am I finding TK? Race car driver mentality. He still thinks he’s a racing driver. Q. Is that good or bad? PATO O’WARD: I think it’s good. I think it drives everybody forward. Obviously, always has a good spirit, lots of energy. But so far, I think it’s been good. Obviously, there’s been also additions to leadership, as well. So it’s obviously taken some time to kind of all mold together, but I think we’re headed in the right direction. Q. Lundgaard said that TK can be critical and that Lundgaard’s father was a race car driver and he never listened to anything his father told him. And so now he’s struggling to listen to what another former race car driver is criticizing him about. Do you have that problem with TK giving you feedback, whether it be good or bad? PATO O’WARD: I always like to hear, like, the negative feedback more, I would say, than the positive because I feel like the positive, it’s always very dependent on just results. But I feel like behind the results, there’s a lot of things that happen, and you always learn more from the things that you’re doing maybe not optimal. I always welcome it. Sometimes maybe it’s not what you want to hear, but I would say it’s the right approach to have an open mind to that to try and be better. Honestly, I welcome it from everyone. Yeah, we all want to be better. Q. Can you talk about the difference in the hybrid and how did that work out in the first practice session? What did you notice? SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Yeah, they’ve added the energy limit, adding to Colton there, so this weekend we can use more than we actually have in previous races. In some ways, the way that we’re using it, which is, obviously, we’re making improvements and getting more comfortable with this hybrid system, but there’s still kinks in it and whatnot, and we’re trying to iron that out. But at the same time, like from a kinks perspective of having to use it and learning to use it and where to use it, I really do enjoy the complexity about it. Q. Pato, in case you have a totally different opinion, of — when TK has an opinion about setup or whatever, a technical decision, you have a totally different decision, you will start a fight, you will be very emotional? What will happen? PATO O’WARD: I’m going to do as I please because I’m in the car. Q. Colton, first off, do you feel safe sitting next to Scott after seeing that FOX cartoon of him? PATO O’WARD: They did you so dirty, man, but they fixed it. SCOTT McLAUGHLIN: I heard. My wife texted me. PATO O’WARD: And I think it’s because of you. PATO O’WARD: They’re going to land a helicopter on it. SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: I know. It was kind of accurate, though. I do have a big forehead. That’s why I wear a hat. PATO O’WARD: But not that big. Don’t do yourself so dirty. Q. Earlier today, we were saying they weren’t going cool suit on Sunday. After being in that practice session, where do you stand on cool suit — SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: Same. SCOTT MCLAUGHLIN: This place is a difficult track after a long amount of time, big loads in corners. The heat is going to be close to 90 degrees on Sunday. Yeah, I’m wearing it. PATO O’WARD: I’ve used it once. But maybe I should reconsider. I used it once and it was in Nashville, and I was very thankful I used it because I think you didn’t and you looked wrecked after the race. I don’t know, maybe I’ll reconsider. |