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Track Report: May 20

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. May 20, 2016: Fast Friday proved challenging for the teams of A.J. Foyt Racing. Takuma Sato, in the No. 14 ABC Supply Honda, was able to find some gains in speed with the help of boost, in addition to valuable feedback, at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. “Today with the higher boost, it bumped up the speed significantly so it was a different dynamic of the car balance. We tried a few things and got very valuable information today but we weren’t able to put everything together for the speed. We’ll analyze the data tonight and hopefully we’ll go faster tomorrow.”

Jack Hawksworth, in his No. 41 ABC Supply Honda, feels he is not quite where he would like to be with his entry into the Indianapolis 500, however is getting a feel for the direction he’d like to go. “We’ve got a bit of work to do still on the car. The car we have right now is doing a few different things in the corners. I think we found something in the right direction there at the end of the session. We certainly have some ideas for tomorrow so hopefully we can just calm the car down and get it to do just one thing in the corners.”

Alex Tagliani, in the No. 35 Alfe Heat Treating Honda, spent much of the day feeling out changes to the car ahead of tomorrow’s qualifications. Working with the crew in the garage to find a preferred setup, Tagliani feels the team is in a tough spot. “Obviously it was not a good day today for us. We really struggled to find the setup with car trim. We had a couple of tough moments on the track. Not something you really want to see, so we are in a really rough situation right now because we have to change the car and hit it right on the money for our first run tomorrow. It’s going to be difficult, but we’re going to put our heads down and figure something out."

The teams look ahead to tomorrow morning’s group and full field practice beginning at 8:00am ET. Qualifying will begin at 11 a.m. and end at 5:50 p.m., and it will lock in the Firestone Fast 9 which will compete for the Pole position on Sunday afternoon. Each car in the field will have to make another four-lap qualifying run on Sunday to establish their grid position for the race.

Tomorrow’s broadcast of qualifications runs from 11:00am to 3:00pm ET on ESPN3, switching to ABC from 4:00pm to 6:00pm ET.