The city of Long Beach received nothing but praise from the two fastest IndyCar drivers on Friday.
“Turn 8. That’s the corner,” said Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, who was fourth in the No. 60 Honda. Offseason grinding of the bump-laden corner that feed onto the long back straight made the blast through Turn 8 a pleasantly fast experience as Rosenqvist and former teammate Pato O’Ward found in his No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevy.
“There used to be a bump there last year,” O’Ward said after going P1 with a lap of 1m06.6874s. “You had to wait after the hump, then come into power. Now that the hump is gone, it’s a lot quicker. That is definitely somewhere where I found quite a bit of lap time compared to last year.”
The interesting note to go with O’Ward’s comments is the nearly identical lap he delivered in 2023 of 1m06.6999s in the same Friday session. Although the improvement to Turn 8 certainly helped to shorten the elapsed time it took to get to Turn 9, the track was visibly dirty, which likely conspired to hide the circuit’s full potential.
“Turn 8 was quite a big difference,” Rosenqvist added. “You can carry a ton of speed… I think they’ve done a good job.”
Turn 5, a site of more than a few problems last year, also received some improvements by the city which pleased the Swede.
“They did a curve modification that seemed to work well for us,” he said. “So yeah, all good.”