Power says Q1 tactic was crucial to pole
Will Power, who earlier clocked his seventh pole position at the St. Petersburg track, said nailing first qualifying in one lap and then preserving that set of Firestones for the Fast Six shootout made it “easier”.
Will Power, Team Penske Chevrolet
Sam Cobb / Motorsport Images
At the end of three rounds of qualifying, the Team Penske-Chevrolet driver grabbed the 45th pole of his Indy car career, to edge Scott Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda by just 0.16sec.
Said Power: “In the first session, I realized on my out-lap that the tires were coming in a lot quicker than the day before. I thought, ‘I can probably do this on the first lap,’ and so I went for it and then I just pitted after one lap.”
Teams are given only two sets of reds for the three segments of qualifying, so unless a team/car/driver has such a huge pace advantage that they can complete a round of qualifying on the ‘slower’ harder primary tire, teams use both sets of red alternate tires in the opening two rounds of qualifying. That means the Firestone Fast Six is generally a fight on used reds, so keeping as much life in them as possible can be key to the fastest laps.
“It was a total guess, but it felt like [that first lap] had been pretty hooked up, and would be good enough,” said Power. “So we banked that one-lap set and that definitely makes it easier in the Fast Six.”
Describing his tail-out moment in Q2 that saw him scrape the wall exiting Turn 10, Power said he was confident that the damage wouldn’t be severe enough to halt him.
“The ‘sharkfin’ [rear bodywork on the aerokits] sticks out further than the wheel so I didn’t think it would be a problem,” he said. “It’s just that the lap before I didn’t get that [good an] exit, which ruined that lap.
“This was my third lap and so I just stayed in it, and got through. It just scraped the tires, didn’t get the rims.”
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