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Strange practice conditions hurt Andretti drivers in Phoenix

The windy and sand-blasted conditions in practice for tonight’s Phoenix Grand Prix left the Andretti Autosport-Honda quartet underprepared for qualifying, and Marco Andretti will lead the AA charge from P9.

IndyCar teams return to garage in dust storm

IndyCar teams return to garage in dust storm

Scott R LePage / Motorsport Images

Marco Andretti, Andretti Autosport Honda
Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti Autosport Honda
Alexander Rossi, Herta - Andretti Autosport Honda
Marco Andretti, Andretti Autosport Honda
Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti Autosport Honda
Takuma Sato, Andretti Autosport Honda
Marco Andretti, Andretti Autosport Honda
Ryan Hunter-Reay, Andretti Autosport Honda nose cone

Gusts of 35-40mph at Phoenix International Raceway eventually swirled sand from the surrounding dunes onto the track, and meant Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi and Takuma Sato failed to complete uncompromised qualifying simulation runs.

They will roll off for tonight’s Desert Diamond West Valley Phoenix GP in ninth, 12th, 15th and 18th respectively.

Said Andretti: “I had the Oberto Circle K car pretty wrung out for the situation. I didn’t get to do a [qualifying] run in practice and that really, really hurt us.

“I sort of reacted to the glaze of the front tire and had a lot of understeer on the out-lap, but that was just the characteristic of the tire coming in, so I reacted in the cockpit when I probably shouldn’t have. I would have been better just driving it and not touching the cockpit tools – but that’s what you learn in practice. Without that, we just sort of went for it.

“It was really trusting our work, and we do good work in testing. We went back to a setup from two months ago here in testing and it rebounded and that’s a good confidence-builder going forward.”

Andretti’s 191.387mph two-lap average in qualifying was 3.6mph from Helio Castroneves’ pole-winning speed, and approximately 1.1mph slower than the fastest Honda, Tony Kanaan’s Chip Ganassi Racing entry.

Hunter-Reay, one of the stars of this race last year, commented: ““We just missed it by a tick – that’s all it takes here. We had just a little bit of an imbalance. It was really tricky earlier [in practice] with the wind and gusts and sand storms. I remember coming out of Turn 4 at one point and it was a wall of orange dust coming at me. It was an interesting day, I’ve never really had that in a racecar.

“Hopefully we can make the DHL car similar to last year. Last year we had a good run and we made some great passes on restarts.”

Both Rossi and Sato admitted their qualifying setups had been too conservative, in an (over)reaction to the bizarre practice conditions.

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