Just a brief update for Saturday, from the rolling countryside of Monterey California.

IndyCar’s annual visit to Laguna Seca started off with a bit of water. No, not the seashore, rain! It doesn’t seem to make much difference which month, Laguna can get heavy fog, which effectively masquerades as rain, early in the morning, and true to form, this morning was no different. Practice? We don’t need no stinking practice”. IndyCar practice was cancelled because the Rain, errr … “Fog” prevented the medic-vac helicopter from flying, so no morning practice.

But, as is also pretty much normal for Laguna, the morning sun burned off the mist and dried the track up. After the “Fast Six” session of qualifying, the number two qualifier, Pato O’Ward commented “They shouldn’t schedule anything here before 10:00AM”,  

It must have affected the traction because the qualifying saw a bunch of off-roading, as three or four people ran off at turn 6 and a few other places

The Fast Six went at it later in the day, and to no one’s surprise Pole position went to Spain’s Alex Palou, winner of 7 events for the Chip Ganassi team.. Also not a surprise, it was Pato O’Ward in the Off-Pole position. Pato currently runs in second place on the season, and recently won his 2nd event of the year, the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto.  The rest of the Fast Six were, in order, Colton Herta, Josef Newgarden, Will Power and Power and David Malukas.

The first race of the day was the Indy NXT race. So far this season, Norway’s Dennis Hauger is looking like Alex Palou in the NTT IndyCar series. Five wins, six poles and 8 top 5 finishes. Only 3 other people have won even a single race. Hauger races for the Andretti Global Team, and so far Andretti holds three of the first five places in the championship. But the best Hauger could muster today was a second, as Caio Collet, driving for the HMD team, put it on pole and led from start to finish. Mind you, Hauger was not far off the pace, and over the last 10 laps of the race sliced the lead down to a single car length at a couple of points. But as the saying goes “Close, but no cigar…”. After a first lap that saw 7 cars involved in off track excursions, and a few laps under caution,  the battle between these two, the rest of the field was pretty much “Left for dead”

Let’s hope that tomorrow the fog stays away in the morning, and things will run on schedule, but only time will tell.   

Article by: Richard Haight

Photo Credit: ChuckNull