Alexander Rossi got off to a strong start this weekend at Barber Motorsports Park, and he hopes to use that pace on Sunday to turn around his luck at the Alabama road course.
Rossi has not had poor finishes in every one of the six times he has raced at Barber, but he also has not had much success. He often finishes lower down the order than he feels he is capable of, and has yet to score a podium on the 2.3-mile course that winds through the hillside.
A recent breakthrough in testing with the setup of his car, however, could pay dividends this weekend as IndyCar visits its first natural-terrain road course of the season.
In good spirits after finishing third in the opening practice session, Rossi described how he is optimistic that he can finally get at least a podium this weekend.
“I’ll be honest, I don’t really like [this track],” said Rossi. “I think it’s pretty difficult to get it right. We haven’t had a lot of success here, so that probably plays into my displeasure.
“On the #27 side, I think we were weaker on road courses than Colton [Herta] for the past year and a half or so.
“We found something that we could really take most places, whereas before we were kind of scrambling every weekend we showed up, trying to find a package we were happy with.
“Obviously this is our first road course race of ’22, but it’s translated to the test and to this weekend so far. Yeah, hopefully we have a weekend that makes me love this place. It’s been six years of really struggling around here, frankly.
“We had a decent qualifying last year, but no results to show for it. I’m optimistic this is a good sign of our road course progression from last year carried over to this year.”
Rossi comes into the fourth round of the season sitting 18th in points, and has been rumored to be looking for a ride outside of Andretti Autosport of the 2023 season.
