Kyle Larson misses valuable track time during 'boring and frustrating' day of Indy 500 practice
The first two days of Indy 500 practice were plagued by rain. Finally, today, the weather cleared up for Kyle Larson to hit the track. Except, the NASCAR star ran fewer laps than most of his competitors.
In a week where Kyle Larson needs lap time the most, he hasn’t really gotten it. Rain was the first issue. Then today, his team had to swap out the engine after a failure which ate up a lot of time. Finally, he was ready to go on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway track.
The only issue was that his car was in race trim and the pack he planned on running with had all come in off the track. He did run some laps but never got up to very high speeds, relative to his peers.
Then his team decided they would swap from race to qualifying trim in order to let him experience a four-lap qualifying run. While his Arrow McLaren team was making the swap to qualifying trim, Kyle Larson talked about his less-than-ideal day at the track.
“Yeah I thought the weather was going to be good, I’d get lots of laps today and everyone else is turning laps except me,” Larson said to NBC Sports. “It’s been a bit boring and frustrating but uh – yeah just finishing swapping over to q-sim or whatever that entails. Then just go out there make some laps see what kind of speed we have.
“I’m not sure what they’re [the team] trying to learn or what they learned from qualifying, sim stuff. Hopefully, there is something I can take away from it and just get familiar with cockpit adjustments and all of that throughout a qualifying run. That’s what I’m looking to take out of it.”
When asked how it will feel different – Larson was honest. He isn’t sure. That is one of the cons to doing this for the first time. He has never experienced this car or gone through this process.
“I don’t know, I don’t know how it will be different,” Larson admitted. “I’ve been trying to listen to other drivers’ interviews and stuff and it sounds like the car just doesn’t feel as good I guess because it’s more trimmed out. The balance is probably not quite as stuck but yeah I guess I’ll learn here in a minute. But yeah, no it’s just been a long day of not a whole lot. I just honestly want to get out there and make some laps and kill some time.”
Kyle Larson races a lot. NASCAR, sprint cars, dirt cars – it doesn’t matter what. He likely has never had the opportunity to have hours and hours of practice like this for a single race. And he needs it.
Larson is insanely talented, but this time is valuable. It feels like Arrow McLaren did not optimize that time and it could come back to bite this No. 17 team effort. Fast Friday is coming up tomorrow and then it will be qualifying throughout the weekend.
Let’s not forget, Kyle Larson has to make the race before he can actually complete the double.