Foyt team expects to be “very competitive” at Gateway

While Honda-powered teams enter the Gateway race wary of the drag caused by the HPD aerokit on short ovals, Chevrolet teams are expecting to have an advantage this weekend. And, following two strong tests at Gateway for Daly – fastest on the old track surface, third fastest on the repaved surface – the Foyt team personnel are positive they can run toward the front of the pack in the Bommarito Automotive Group 500.

Daly, whose best result of the year was seventh at Texas Motor Speedway, said: “I've been looking forward to the Gateway race since our first test there in May. I've really enjoyed the testing we've done there this year and we've been quick every time on track so I have high expectations for the weekend.

“It'll be supremely close as IndyCar weekends normally are but I hope to be fighting at the front end of the field all weekend long."

Munoz’s best result has also been a seventh, but he has scored top-10s on three very different types of oval – Phoenix, Indianapolis and Pocono – and reckons Daly’s pace in the test is a good sign for today’s qualifying and tomorrow’s race.

“After they repaved the track at Gateway, my teammate ran there a few hours. The car seemed pretty competitive – Conor was third fastest.  I think we have a strong package. In the Open Test our team was really quick.

“It seems like a nice track, it’s new for everyone and they did a great job with the repaving… We need to keep the top 10s coming.”

Colliver stated: “I think we as an entire team were all both pleasantly and mildly surprised by our performance at the test. We learned a lot at the April Texas test and again during the Phoenix race weekend, so we knew we were headed to Gateway having started to get a solid handle on our 2017 oval package.

“Anytime a small re-building team can pace a test against competition as strong as we have in the current IndyCar series it is a surprise. The fact we were able to back it up at the “track surface” test with a solid third quick – only two-hundredths of a second behind Scott Dixon for second-fast wasn’t a surprise. We expect to be very competitive this weekend.”

Colliver, who credited the team’s setup to knowledge he gained at Gateway as Al Unser Jr.’s engineer in the early 2000s, said the resurfacing work hadn’t required a total rethink on car balance.

“We made a few changes, nothing wholesale, but a few tweaks here and there,” he said. “Unfortunately the rain shortened the test so we didn’t get to complete our entire list and get the car exactly where we wanted it, but neither did our competition.

“The fact that only a couple of drivers had been there before put most of them back on level ground, so Conor’s relatively limited oval experience is less relevant at this track.

“Additionally, the fact that it is not wide open all the way around and requires some pedaling down in Turns 1 and 2 makes it a little more similar to a fast road course than most ovals.”  

Colliver remarked that the team, too, will benefit from its rivals’ similar lack of experience at Gateway, and believes that AJ Foyt Racing’s early-season struggles were forgivable given the vast number of changes within the team.

“Definitely being on level ground puts us at less of a disadvantage in terms of fighting against teams with many years of data at certain tracks. So yes, I do think it bodes well to show what we are capable of as a group moving forward. I think we are finally starting to find a rhythm.

“I think it’s easy to for us and others to lose sight of how big an overhaul the team went through over the off-season. Having two new race engineers, neither of whom had run an IndyCar full-time in more than eight or nine years, two new drivers, a new engine package, a new aerokit, moving one of the teams to Indy, setting up a new shop and with the 4 car basically being an entirely new crew….

“I’d say we’ve made great progress since the beginning of the season.”