Castroneves remains worried over race pace

However, Castroneves says he is more worried by the fact that he’s not convinced the car is strong in race setup, either.

“Yesterday, we pushed to the limit to be in the Fast Nine, and it paid off,” he told Motorsport.com of his run to fourth. “Maybe some of the other guys took it easy just to get in, whereas we really, really took it to the limit. I told the team, ‘I can only do this a few times, you know!’

“Then this morning in practice, we went even lower downforce than we used yesterday, but to be honest, it was absolutely horrendous. The temperature was actually warmer this morning than this afternoon for qualifying so maybe that was part of the problem. The only other difference was the shadow on the front straight and Turn 1 in the afternoon.”

For his qualifying run in the decisive Fast Nine session, Castroneves set four laps of 229.690mph, 229.415, 228.802 and 228.556, producing an average of 229.115, that was still only good enough for the outside of the third row.

“And man, I’m telling you that 229 was surprising, actually. Didn’t expect it to be that good. It didn’t feel good at all.” 

Worried over race pace, too

Castroneves, who is hoping to join AJ Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears in the four-time Indy winners’ list, said he wasn’t yet convinced he had a car that was ready to take him to Victory Lane next Sunday.

“No, we’ve been struggling for speed all week, so to be in the top nine was very lucky,” he said. “I don’t believe we have found the race setup.

“The good news is that we’ll be changing engines but everyone changes engine for Indy. But for us, I think that’s the only thing we haven’t tried that may actually help us.”

However, as he enters his 16^th Indy 500, Castroneves said experience has taught him how much weather can vary in Indianapolis, and so the race could throw up track conditions that work with his car’s setup.

“Yes, it’s Indy, man, anything can happen here!” he smiled. “The last week has been quite cold overall, we expect this week to be much hotter. So a lot of cars that were faster than us last week could be bad and we end up with something good.”

Indy 500 practice continues tomorrow with a three-and-a-half-hour session for the teams to again practice with race downforce levels. That will be their last practice before their one-hour run on Carb Day [Friday].

Castroneves, who is running a retro Pennzoil livery and wearing a Mears tribute helmet, said: “We have a list of things to try, but it’s not a long list because we tried almost everything last week.

“The qualifying runs gave us one or two extra ideas, where we thought, ‘Hmm, OK, maybe we try this with race-level downforce, maybe this will work.’ That’s what we’ll do. If they work, then that’s good. If they don’t…”