Pato O’Ward begins his quest toward ending his winless streak by topping the practice charts at Long Beach (Photo: Christopher Vargas | The Podium Finish).
LONG BEACH, Calif. — The brave 27 men of the NTT INDYCAR Series roared the streets of Long Beach with their only practice session on Friday afternoon. When the dust settled, it was Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward who set the early tone of the 49th Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
O’Ward’s time of 66.6874 seconds was the best among the field as his engine-powered Chevrolet represented four out of the top-five spots. Behind O’Ward were the Penske duo of Will Power and Scott McLaughlin before the lone Honda in the top five, led by Felix Rosenqvist. Rounding out the top five was Penske’s third driver in 2022 Long Beach winner Josef Newgarden.
With one session in the books, O’Ward’s mind shifts toward a very busy Saturday where a morning practice session will commence at 11:25 a.m. ET before qualifying at 2:25 p.m.
O’Ward was pleased with the strong start as the goal is to end his 23-race winless streak with a major victory in Southern California. A result better than 17th a year ago will certainly come a long way for the man behind the No. 5 Chevrolet.
“Really solid start for us in the 5 car. I wouldn’t say it’s quite different to last year,” said O’Ward. “We were really, really strong. Just every other INDYCAR weekend, you have to execute every single session.
Every opportunity you have, you have to really see what way you want to go. There’s quite a bit of track evolution, I’d say. Although the times were quicker than I thought. We’ll see tomorrow in P2 and in qualifying.”
While going fourth quickest and being Honda’s top driver in the session, Rosenqvist explained that his afternoon didn’t paint the whole story. Instead, Rosenqvist endured issues with his No. 60 Meyer Shank Honda, which eventually got resolved.
Having an opportunity to run the Firestone red compounds helped him tremendously as similarly to O’Ward, Rosenqvist is on a long winless streak dating back to Road America race No. 2 in 2020, 59 events ago.
“Solid start. Actually, we had some small issues, but I think we worked through most of them. Got a clean run on the reds. That was important,” said Rosenqvist. “I think we’ve been confident, especially on the street courses. Still kind of learning how to work with each other every run out there. Happy so far. Solid.”
Rosenqvist led the Honda group in practice (Photo: Christopher Vargas | The Podium Finish).
Defending race winner Kyle Kirkwood was eighth quickest in the session, 0.5571 seconds slower than O’Ward as he was the only Andretti Global driver to crack the top-10. However, Kirkwood endured a shifting issue while Rosenqvist’s teammate Tom Blomqvist reported having throttle issues.
When asked during the press conference, Rosenqvist elaborated that his woeful moment in the session isn’t as big as it seems. He was checking in on the brakes to see if it could be tuned up before running more laps.
“It wasn’t really a problem,” said Rosenqvist. “It was just kind of we were not really in the right window.”
Former Formula 2 champion Theo Pourchaire ended up logging 35 laps for a personal best of 68.2857 seconds, over a second slower than his Arrow McLaren teammate. Pourchaire and Pietro Fittipaldi ran the most laps of the day with the aforementioned 35 circuits around the 1.968-mile street course.
Sunday’s 85-lap race will kick off a 16-race grind over six months. In many ways, Long Beach symbolizes the true start of the championship trail and McLaughlin best described it as a momentum builder going forward in the 2024 INDYCAR season.
“I’m home for a weekend for the next 11 weeks, so it’s pretty wild. But we’re in a good spot,” said McLaughlin. “I think the cars and the team, we feel pretty quick right now. We just gotta keep that momentum and there’s no better way than just racing all the time. So I think we’re in a good spot.”
