Jones confident he’ll be strong at both Indy tracks

The reigning Indy Lights champion told Motorsport.com: “I’m really looking forward to the Indy roadcourse, because I think that’s one of my strongest circuits. I know Dale’s guys have worked really hard on getting us mechanical grip, although I haven’t discussed setups yet with Seb [Bourdais, teammate].

“And then obviously onto the big one, and I think Honda are the strongest manufacturer this year.

“We knew we were gonna struggle at Phoenix but we’re going to be good in the next few races, I’m sure of that. I’ve got a good feeling that it’s going to be a strong month for us.”

Jones who impressed IndyCar fans by aggressively passing Marco Andretti at St. Petersburg and Graham Rahal at Long Beach, said he found the Phoenix International Raceway his biggest challenge yet.

He said: “It was very tough, harder than I expected – not physically because I’ve been doing a lot of strength training – but because there was so much work to do whenever I got near the car in front. The car got so loose and so I found it hard to stay right up behind.

“But on the other hand, I probably learned more in that one race than I did in two days of testing here. I had mono[nucleosis or glandular fever] all winter, so in testing I’d do 10 laps, feel great, and then my body would be telling me I had to go to sleep!

“When we were about to do qualifying runs here in the February test, all of a sudden I had no energy. So race weekend was great for me – we went through a lot more, even though there were problems with all the windy conditions in practice.

“But I’d say the car was pretty good balance-wise throughout the race, so we definitely got something right. I could adjust it almost completely with my cockpit tools. The only changes we outside the car were to tire pressures on one stint.

“And we got through the crashes that obviously we could have got caught up in. It’s a shame for Seb that he was wiped out.”

Although Jones’ race engineer, Michael Cannon, was regretting giving his driver too conservative a setup for qualifying, Jones said he wasn’t bothered.

He said: “I understand that it’s better for the team altogether if they don’t risk as much with a rookie. I respect that. I mean, yeah, I think I could have done more with less downforce in qualifying, but I realize trust needs to be earned, so the next oval they’ll trust me a bit more.”