Print

Practice Report: Kohler Grand Prix at Road America

ELKHART LAKE, Wis.June 24, 2016'The Verizon IndyCar Series officially returned to Road America today and the fans came out in droves to welcome them. 'Race fans could be seen throughout the beautiful four-mile long road course and the day looked more like a race day than just a practice day.

The ABC Supply team got in lots of practice with both cars which was good since they had missed out on a test day earlier in the month. Takuma Sato was 18th in the first session and 11th quickest in the second one with a lap time of 1 minute, 43.8702 seconds (139.120mph), which was 13th fastest overall for the day. He likes his car but is still searching for the ultimate qualifying setup.

'It's great to be coming back to Road America,' Sato said. 'It's a favorite of everyone's and the fans have waited so long for this. Look it's Friday and it's already like race day as a lot of crowds have come out which is fantastic. Great weather today, a great circuit which is a classic type'very narrow and very fast'and it feels really good. We had to go through quite a few items since we couldn't make the test here so this was our first run with the 2016 package and we had a lot of things to do. Busy test day and I think we were reasonably okay but we still need to work really hard to get the speed out of the ABC Supply car for tomorrow's qualifying.'

Jack Hawksworth was pleased with his No. 41 ABC Supply Honda and believes the car just needs some fine-tuning before tomorrow's qualifying session. Hawksworth was third quickest in the first session with a time of 1 minute, 43.6747 seconds (139.382mph) which was fifth quickest overall for the day. In the second session, he was 16th quick with a time of 1 minute, 43.9679 seconds.

'Today was quite a good day actually,' Hawksworth said. 'We did quite a lot of stuff ' experimenting with things between this morning and this afternoon. I think we found a pretty competitive car so hopefully we'll sit down tonight and fine-tune everything. The only question mark for me is the red tire, what's going to happen when we put that on in qualifying. 'We've seen this year that we can be uncompetitive on the blacks but we put reds on and we become competitive and vice versa so hopefully we can get that right. It will require a bit of luck as well because nobody's run the reds here but we'll do our best with that as well. Black tire-wise, I'm pretty happy with it, the ABC Supply car's in the ballpark. We tested a lot of stuff and had quite a clean day which is nice. It's good to run for a day and when we can run clean, we can have a good day.'

Graham Rahal set quick time in the second session with his timed lap of 1 minute, 43.0224 seconds (140.265mph). Second through fifth overall were Will Power, Simon Pagenaud, Carlos Munoz and Hawksworth.

There is a 45-minute practice in the morning before qualifying which starts at 4:00 p.m. ET. It will be broadcast on a tape-delayed basis starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.