The Andretti Global trio of Colton Herta, Kyle Kirkwood and Marcus Ericsson went 1-2-3 on Thursday at the five-team, nine-car test at World Wide Technology Raceway, site of the NTT IndyCar Series’ next race.
The test, which ran from late morning to early evening to mirror the upcoming race weekend run schedule, saw Herta post 151 laps and record an unofficial best of 25.427s (176.977mph) in the No. 26 Honda. Kirkwood was almost identical to Herta with a 25.447s best in the No. 27 Honda, and Ericsson was close as well with a 25.504s in the No. 28 Honda.
Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly, who subbed for Agustin Canapino on Thursday, was fourth in the No. 78 Chevy (25.521s), just ahead of impromptu teammate Romain Grosjean in the No. 77 (25.578s), who had a heavy crash at the end of the day and is said to have done a considerable amount of damage to the back of the car.
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Chip Ganassi Racing rookies Kyffin Simpson in the No. 4 Honda (25.737s) and Linus Lundqvist in the No. 8 Honda (25.755s) were sixth and seventh. Behind them in eighth, Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen in the No. 20 Chevy (25.824s) was the first to crash, and it was enough of a hit to bring an end to his day. Arrow McLaren’s Nolan Siegel rounded out the rookie group in the No. 6 Chevy (25.887s).
The fact that the gap between the fastest driver, an IndyCar veteran, and the slowest driver, an IndyCar novice, was a relatively scant 0.460s at the 1.25-mile oval was an indicator of the concerns held by Kirkwood.
“I don’t know if anyone’s gonna like what I have to say, but we focused mostly on qualifying, because it’s probably gonna be a qualifying race. We tried to follow each other at the end and we couldn’t get within a second of each other, so qualifying is going to be super important,” Kirkwood told RACER.
The same issue that plagued the Iowa Speedway doubleheader, where almost no degradation (deg) in tire performance throughout each stint made for lots of single-file racing, was seen at WWTR.
“We were at max downforce and very minimal deg — nearly zero deg,” Kirkwood said. “So I don’t know if they’re going to change anything about it, but it’s less than ideal based on the test. We can’t add any more downforce. Usually, downforce fixes the issue, but maybe we’ve added too much? I don’t know.
“It’s just easy-flat through [Turn] 3 and 4; everyone’s doing the same speed, so the only way you can get by somebody is if you’re somehow way faster out of [Turn] 2, but that wasn’t really happening so much. If you had deg, it would be a better race. If it’s like we just tested, it’s going to be like Iowa, so I hope something will change with tires or aero or whatever they think it needs to be.”