INDYCAR QUALIFYING REPORT: Mission Foods Grand Prix of Monterey

Will Power

No. 26 TWG AI Honda

• After finishing fifth in this morning’s practice session, Will Power took on Group 2 of qualifying and ran as high as second early in the session.
• Power remained inside the top six until the checkered flag but was pushed out at the last minute, missing out on advancing to Round 2 by just 0.0575 seconds.
• The Australian will start tomorrow’s season finale from 14th as he looks to capture his first career win on the Northern California road course.

“Qualifying was a little confusing for us. We made a lot of changes last night and were pretty good in practice this morning and finished fifth. From the outset of qualifying, we just weren’t really near the pace. It’s hard to say exactly what happened, so we’ll have to take a look at it and fight for the win tomorrow.”

Kyle Kirkwood

No. 27 Sam’s Club Honda

• As the first Andretti Global driver to take on the opening round of qualifying, Kyle Kirkwood came into today’s session following a seventh-place finish in this morning’s practice.
• After advancing out of Group 1 with the third-fastest lap, Kirkwood looked to have enough pace to transfer in Round 2 before missing out on advancing to the Firestone Fast Six by just 0.1628 seconds.
• The No. 27 Sam’s Club Honda driver concluded the day with a fifth-place finish on the Final Practice leaderboard.
• Starting seventh tomorrow, Kirkwood will make his second-best start at Laguna Seca as he looks to fight for the win and close out the season second in the INDYCAR Championship Standings.

“We’re in a good spot right now in P7. Lundgaard got the engine penalty, so he’ll be behind us, which is good in terms of fighting for second in the Championship. Yesterday, we weren’t absolutely incredible, but we made some small changes which led to some good results. That’s the one thing that we have at Andretti Global: three really good drivers that we can base our setup on. If one of us does good, we can just all shift to that setup, and it’ll be awesome.”

No. 28 DKY Foundation Honda

• After finishing ninth in this morning’s practice session, Marcus Ericsson joined teammate Will Power in Group 2 and advanced to Round 2 with the second-fastest lap. 
• In Round 2, Ericsson ran as high as fifth before facing some balance issues as the session progressed and ultimately missed out on the Firestone Fast Six by 0.2863 seconds.
• The Swede will start tomorrow’s season finale from eighth, which marks his second-best starting position at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.

“We were super fast. I don’t know if the track changed a little bit for Q2, but it just felt like the balance wasn’t the same as on my Q1 run. So I was fighting a little bit more with the car in Q2. Obviously, if we could have matched the time from Q1, we would have gone through easily. So that’s a little bit disappointing, but the DKY Foundation Honda has been good. We know we’re getting into the race from eighth, so we should be in good shape. I think for us on the No. 28 car, we’ve had a really positive season, especially the second half; we’ve had great momentum and scored a lot of points. We’ve been one of the best scoring cars since the 500. It’s just about bringing that momentum into this finale and having a good weekend here. Then we’ll work on that in the offseason and come out strong for next year. So, I’m really proud of the 28 crew in the way we bounced back after the season we had last year. I think that says a lot about this group. They give me a lot of confidence for next year as well.”

“Decent result today. Obviously not what we were looking for. We wanted to get all three cars in the top six, but we’re all starting from a decent positions tomorrow. We’ll put our best foot forward and try to finish the season off strong. We’ve got three cars that are pretty good, and I think it’ll be an interesting race with tire degradation. We’ll see what it all boils down to at the end of the race.”