Indy 500 Track Report - May 17

The AJ Foyt Racing team enjoyed a productive day at Indianapolis as both cars were able to run race setups at the end of the day when the track was thick with traffic. Driving the No. 41 ECar/ABC Supply Honda, Wade Cunningham posted a top speed of 221.4 mph in just his third of nine laps on track today. He was seventh quickest overall. Piloting the No. 14 ABC Supply Honda, Mike Conway ran earlier in the day by himself and gained three miles per hour over yesterday with his speed of 218.7 mph. In Happy Hour traffic, Conway ran 220.9 mph which is the quickest he has run this month and was 11th on the speed chart.

Mike Conway: “We made some significant gains from yesterday to today in terms of speed; we seemed to have found a couple miles an hour. We’ve been trimming out a bit more today which obviously helped. I think to run high 218s was pretty good I think. Other cars around us seemed pretty similar, some were a little quicker so we have something to aim for. We’re glad we found more speed. We did a little bit of race setup at the end so it was nice to get a feel for what it’s like and it felt pretty good. We have to work on that as well but the main focus today was to get speed out of the car. At the end we thought we’d try running in traffic. We picked up some tows there running together.”

Wade Cunningham: “We rolled out full race setup, it was the first time we’d run full tanks so we matched tires with the fuel loads, full race downforce. We made some attempts at it yesterday but we improved the gearing a little bit for the race downforce. We were trying to get the package in the window and we were a lot closer so in the draft we were able to produce a stronger time than yesterday. I’m pretty pleased with the balance of the car. Mike did some solo running this morning to figure out if we’d made some improvements in the setup and everything and we definitely have. Tomorrow when we start working on qualifying trim we can go the direction Mike did this morning and show the same kind of gains. A positive end to the week so far.”

Indy 500 Track Report - May 16

The team found a little more speed with Wade Cunningham who also managed to to get a baseline on the race setup for the no. 41 ECat/ABC Supply Honda. Conway's no.14 ABCSupply Honda is still looking for speed. the 41 car turned 29 laps for a top speed of 219.9 mph which ended up 16th on the chart (seventh when he posted it in early afternoon). The no 14 car's quickest lap was 217.2mph after 41 laps on track. It was 25th fastest o 30 cars. Asked what he was doing for dinner, Conway quipped, "Having some fast food." The team is confident they will get things sorted out before qualifying this Saturday.

Mike Conway: [On your plans for tomorrow?] “We haven’t done any race setups and there are a lot of teams doing a bit of that today so we have to get out there and do some but at same time we have to find some speed and know what our speed is for a qualifying run. We have a lot to get through tomorrow. Friday we get a bit of a power boost so that could change things again, so tomorrow will be our best shot to get some race setups done.”

Wade Cunningham: “We made some gains today. We got an idea of where we need to be for race downforce and on the back of that you figure out what gearing you need and the kind of balance as well. We’re headed in the right direction that way. We improved the car mechanically in terms of feel and overall speed. I’d jumped up the charts and the time was really a function of being able to use a bit of gear for the draft. Hopefully making these sort of gains a few more positions tomorrow and a few more the next day and we’ll be chasing the back end of the top 10 which is our target. A relatively productive day, no major issues. And like I said earlier, if my rookie day was the worst day we have this month, we’ll have a good time.”