The surprise of Saturday’s IndyCar qualifying from The Thermal Club was Team Penske’s failure to advance out of the first round.
It was not just one driver that failed to advance, but all three veteran drivers were relegated to the sidelines after poor showings in the opening session.
Team Penske did not appear to be the quickest team during the earlier portion of the weekend, but they certainly were not as slow as the time sheets showed on Saturday afternoon.
Josef Newgarden ended up with the highest starting place of the three, but even his best effort earned him the 17th starting position.
“I dunno, we just weren’t quick,” Newgarden related to FOX after climbing from the car. “All of us didn’t look fantastic for our group.
“If you’re saying ‘Hey, you need three or four tenths’ I think we could have put that together on the red tire. Had traffic on the end my run. There was probably a tenth or two in that final sector, then I dropped a little time personally in Turn 9.
“I felt really good going into qualifying. I thought our car was in a good window. Obviously we’re going to have to find some speed for tomorrow now.”
Soft tires, no grip
All three drivers seemed to struggle on the softer red-walled tires. Even from the trackside television cameras, it was obvious that they were skating all over the tarmac.
The Thermal Club track is very rough, described more than once as a cheese grater, and everyone struggled to some degree to get their cars to grip to the surface.
But Team Penske seemed to take a step backwards in that area when they began to push hard during the opening qualifying session.
Aside from the grip issues, Scott McLaughlin and Will Power had other factors that contributed to their poor performances as well.
McLaughlin spun down the main straight on his first push lap, luckily avoiding the gravel on one side and the Armco barriers on the other.
He continued on, but had to make a final run while sizing up the current grip levels for the first time and qualified in 25th.
Power had trouble in the form of dust on the track from another driver’s excursion into the gravel.
He was forced to abort his first lap, and also struggled to get the right amount of temperature into the soft rubber in time for his final attempt.
“I think I lacked a good out lap to get some front tire temp,” Power said on the television broadcast after earning the 21st starting position.
“Maybe we should have left earlier to have a clear out lap. That first corner I pushed wide and saw I was three tenths down, so I aborted that. I reckon you’re on the back foot anyway because you’ve put a half lap on your tires.
“Yeah, man, we were good in every single session except the one that counted, right? That’s been our whole year so far. We’ve been extremely good in practice, testing, and even on the black [tires] we were fourth quickest. Then when it came time [to qualify] it just wasn’t there.”
Overall, it was a very rare occurrence to see all three Team Penske drivers knocked out in the first round of qualifying.
The last time none of the team’s drivers advanced into the Top 12 was Portland in 2021, over 40 road course events ago.
The mix of issues that caused the poor results seem to indicate that it could be difficult for the team to come up with a comprehensive solution ahead of Sunday’s race.
Although, if any team has shown over the years that it can recover quickly from setbacks, it is Team Penske with its methodical approach to every event weekend.
