Foyt remains wary of the Chevrolets in qualifying

Despite Foyt seeing his drivers Jack Hawksworth and Takuma Sato finish third and fifth in the first session and then other Honda cars take second and third in FP2, he suspects Chevy teams may rise to the fore in qualifying.

Foyt says he’s basing his realism on practice/qualifying at the opening round in St. Petersburg.

He told Motorsport.com: “Chevrolet seems able to ramp it up for qualifying. We looked really strong in practice at St. Pete, and then we saw Penske go forward when the time came to show their hand.”

Although the Foyt drivers were slower, relatively speaking, in second practice today at Long Beach, both Sato and Hawksworth felt they had gathered useful data and expect to be stronger tomorrow.

Foyt too, said although he was tempering his optimism, he was encouraged by the team's weekend performance overall.

“I feel really good about our street course package,” he said, “and we had a good test at Barber, so the road course package is strong too, I think.

“Looking at the Penskes around here and comparing it with our data, I think the places we’re losing some time is in the slow speed turns and under braking.

But compared with last year, the driveability of the HPD package is much improved.”