Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard flirted with being the fastest driver across the first three test sessions at The Thermal Club, and in the fourth and final outing, the Dane clinched first-place as the field of 27 drivers spent the latter part of the two-hour window performing qualifying simulations.
Lundgaard’s 1m38.220s run, the fastest of the event, came amid huge gusts of wind and sand storms that caused a delay to the start of the session. Well behind Lundgaard was the Chevy brigade of Team Penske’s Will Power (+0.420s) and Scott McLaughlin (+0.504s), and the Arrow McLaren trio of Alexander Rossi (+0.591s), Pato O’Ward (+0.658s) and Callum Ilott (+0.669s).
“The wind actually helps you in all [the] really fast stuff,” Power told RACER. “Obviously going down the back straight you get a big tailwind, but then it’s not as good under braking. It seems like it should be slow, but it’s actually quite fast.”
The rapid-fire day concludes with qualifying for Sunday morning’s heat races starting at 5 p.m. PT on Peacock.
Full results to come