Progress. Significant progress. For AJ Foyt Racing, the work behind the scenes is starting to show where it counts–on the race track.
Rookie Benjamin Pedersen advanced to the top 12 for the first time this season and posted his best qualifying run to date in the NTT INDYCAR Series. Breaking into the top 10 with his lap time of 1 minute, 41.4989 seconds (142.370 mph), he will start 10th in the No. 55 Sexton Properties Chevrolet.
“The No. 55 Sexton Properties Team Chevy IndyCar was really good,” the 24-year-old said. “It’s a good weekend so far. We struggled in the beginning but the whole team did a tremendous job to recover for qualifying today. It’s the best qualifying for me in my IndyCar career, not that I’ve had very many, but P 10 as a rookie, and made it into the fast 12–just huge momentum for the whole team especially coming off the month of May. Very, very proud of everyone. We’re just getting better and better. Everyone’s working really hard and yeah, starting the race p10 and looking forward to tomorrow’s race.”
For Team President Larry Foyt, today’s results on the newly paved 4-mile permanent road course were gratifying.
“We were definitely pleased with the progression of our road course program,” said Foyt. “We felt like coming out of the Indy GP that we had learned a lot and made some gains. And just glad that’s showing; I think we have a good base for some of the tracks coming up that are similar to this one. So that’s exciting for us and it’s great progress.”