O’Ward will begin third, however informed NBC Sports activities he’s impressed by how a lot additional ahead the McLaren staff is at this monitor than in 2022.
“I gotta say that the staff arrived with such an excellent package deal for me in comparison with final 12 months,” stated O’Ward, who’s in search of his fifth IndyCar win. “We really began on the again foot final 12 months, and we now have a automotive to battle with tomorrow. I am actually proud of it from the primary follow.”
However Felix Rosenqvist, who gave the impression to be in rivalry for pole place in Q2, will begin eighth. He remarked: “It is such small margins now, it is only one little hit on the [rev] limiter. We performed it protected, we went out early when the monitor was probably the most clear and did an excellent lap, and I do not know if the monitor improved after that, however we have been sturdy all weekend, the automotive felt good.
“We simply missed out by a few hundredths, in order that sucks.”
Alexander Rossi, Arrow McLaren Chevrolet
Picture by: Jake Galstad / Motorsport Images
Their new team-mate Alexander Rossi, who will probably be ranging from the sixth row, added: “We had some points yesterday and just about misplaced a day. We had been taking part in catch-up at present, we had some good moments. Spherical 1 was good, did not fairly get the stability the place we would have liked it for Spherical 2 sadly, and had a lockup on our second set.
“Finally I feel it was an excellent restoration by the staff, however some studying to do to take some steps ahead.”
Most up-to-date Indy 500 winner Ericsson stated he had been “focusing rather a lot on qualifying” and that fourth place is a “nice begin to that.” However Ganassi teammate Palou described lacking out on progressing to the Firestone Quick Six by 0.01sec as “painful.”
He went on: “That exhibits how shut IndyCar is these days, which is tremendous enjoyable. I am joyful general. We had a quick automotive since yesterday, the automotive was able to advancing to the Quick Six, I simply made a tiny mistake at Flip 10, and misplaced rather a lot there.
“We have to test the lengthy runs within the warm-up and it must be a enjoyable race for certain.”
Six-time champion Scott Dixon will roll off ninth when in search of his first St. Pete victory, however was left ruing a Flip 4 shunt in second follow.
“Positively fascinating day at present, crashing in follow this morning,” he remarked. “Not an excessive amount of injury which was nice to get the automotive fastened.
“Went into qualifying with just a few unknowns. We had been the quickest in Q1, wanting good in Q2, then we had an enormous stability shift on the final set of tires and simply had plenty of understeer. We missed by just a few hundredths and that’s irritating as we’ll begin ninth.
“The #9 is certainly rather a lot faster than that. It has been one of many these weekends the place we miss by a bit bit when it counted probably the most.”
Rookie Marcus Armstrong was moderately glad with 13th however got here shut to creating it out of Q1 on his IndyCar debut.
“Most likely not the most effective state of affairs for us with the pink flag on the finish [of Q1, Group 1] with us not getting on the market to do one other lap. However the #11 was actually good; it is simply the advantageous margins.”
