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Team Penske’s three drivers insist they are as open as ever with each other this weekend at Laguna Seca despite all still being in contention for the IndyCar Series title.
Will Power takes the series lead into the final, with a 20-point margin over Josef Newgarden and another 21 points on Scott McLaughlin in the other Penske entry.
Also in the mix, however, are two Chip Ganassi Racing pilots, with Scott Dixon trailing Newgarden on a countback only while Marcus Ericsson is two points ahead of McLaughlin.
Furthermore, Ganassi tested at Laguna Seca recently whereas Penske, which was relatively strong at the Californian circuit last year, chose to address its poor showing at Portland in 2021.
The Chevrolet-powered squad would dominate the Portland weekend this time around, but that leaves it somewhat vulnerable at the season finale.
“It’s a nasty situation, nasty debrief room; don’t like each other,” joked Newgarden about the dynamic in a live title fight at the business end of the season.
“No, we get along well all of us, and so do the team,” he added.
“I think that’s a strength of ours at Team Penske; we’re all competitive, we all want to win, but we’re a unit, and everybody works together.
“You get the benefit of that. You could pop any one of us in any of these cars and they’d all do the same thing. That’s how good each group is.
“So, we work really well together.”
Power commented, “It’s a good combination, as you can see,” while McLaughlin, who would have been unhappy to give up his win at Portland for his Australian team-mate had he been asked to, highlighted the elevated importance of teamwork.
“I think having not tested here, we’re going to have to really talk together and work together to try and make sure we’re all up front because limited laps and availabilities,” noted the New Zealander.
Power and McLaughlin might well be leaning on Newgarden after he topped Practice 1 by more than fourth tenths of a second.
Power was seventh and McLaughlin 11th, with Ericsson 10th and Dixon 17th.
However, Newgarden does not think he will necessarily have it all his own way, even if he feels that there is more time in the #2 Chevrolet.
Worth noting also is that it is expected that primary tyres, rather than the alternates on which all the quick times so far have been achieved, will be preferred for Sunday’s race.
“It’s hard to say; I didn’t even really put together my best lap, and I’m sure that was the case for the majority of the field,” remarked the 2017 and 2019 champion.
“It’s always hard to read off the first session. I think we’ll tighten up tomorrow.
“But, just the early read is good. I felt like we made really good use of our short time that we had today and short set of tyres that we had; we didn’t have a lot to work off of.
“So, I feel good early, but I feel like it’s early days.”
Practice 2 starts on Saturday at 13:15 ET/Sunday at 03:15 AEST, followed by Qualifying on Saturday at 17:05 ET/07:05 AEST, with both of those sessions live and ad-free on Stan Sport.
