QUALIFYING REPORT: Sonsio Grand Prix 

• Colton Herta headed out in Group 2 alongside teammate Kyle Kirkwood, but unfortunately, the driver of the Gainbridge Honda’s qualifying effort concluded after Round 1, where he missed out on advancing to Round 2 by just 0.323 seconds.
• With a previous win on the IMS Road Course, Herta hopes to replicate his previous successes on road courses which includes five wins, seven poles and 29 top-10 finishes.

“It’s a weird thing this weekend because I’ve been generally happy with the car, but we’ve just been slow. I think it’s just a lack of overall grip, and however the mechanical grip is working, it just isn’t giving us the ultimate grip that we need. We’re finding a nice balance in our race car, which is obviously nice for the race, but we still need that ultimate grip that we’re missing. We’ve kind of been chasing our tails all weekend, and it’s really disappointing that none of us made it out of that first round. We still get to race tomorrow, so we’ll go from there.”

• After a spin during this afternoon’s practice session, Kyle Kirkwood came into qualifying determined to bounce back and secure a strong starting position for tomorrow’s race.
• Unfortunately, Kirkwood was unable to put together a clean lap and did not advance to Round 2. 
• Lining up in 21st tomorrow, Kirkwood will look to use his nine top-10 finishes on road courses to go after his second INDYCAR win of the season.

“Qualifying was not ideal for us. We qualified 21st and Colton qualified 13th but was only three-hundredths of a second quicker, so it’s really that close of margins. It always is. We just didn’t really put together a great lap. One tiny mistake turns into a giant mess when you’re qualifying around Indy. It’s a little disappointing, but this place is notorious for racing pretty well, so we’ll just shift our focus to the race and be ready to go tomorrow.”

• Following a brush with the wall in practice this morning, Marcus Ericsson took to the track in Group 2 for the third road course qualifying session of the season.
• Despite climbing as high as third on the leaderboard, Ericsson couldn’t maintain the pace as the session went on and the Fresh Connect Central Honda did not go on to advance to Round 2.
• With a win on the iconic IMS oval circuit, Ericsson will look to secure his first road circuit victory when he makes his seventh start at the Sonsio Grand Prix in the Fresh Connect Central Honda tomorrow.

“Today was a very disappointing result. We’re just struggling for speed so far today. It’s disappointing as a group, and we need to do better than that. I think the No. 28 Fresh Connect Central crew has done a great job optimizing the car and trying to improve it, so it’s not for lack of effort. We’ve got some analyzing to do tonight to be better tomorrow.”

“It was obviously a disappointing qualifying for all three cars. Although they’re split by quite a few grid positions, the times are fairly close, so I don’t think we’re necessarily looking for something that’s a setup variation. I think we’re just looking for overall speed across all three cars. It’s always a challenging event because you don’t get a night between practice and qualifying to look at data and decide what you’re going to do. Thankfully, we have that opportunity tonight, so we’ll make some changes for the race and look to be more competitive tomorrow.”