Team Penske’s Will Power led a series test on Thursday with a session-best lap of 1m07.2762s.
The Aussie led the way as one of nine drivers to unofficially dipped under the IndyCar Series track record of 1m07.722s, set by Helio Castroneves in 2000.
“Very nice, very smooth,” Power said. “A lot of grip. Tough offline. It's incredibly fast.”
Scott McLaughlin, who ended third on the timesheets in the test at 0.2355s behind his Penske teammate’s pace-setting lap, logged a session-most 80 tours and soaked up every one of them around the 11-turn, 2.238-mile natural terrain road course.
“It's wicked,” McLaughlin said. “It feels so awesome.
“It's like I said to all the guys when I came in, 'This is exactly why I went IndyCar racing.’ It's such an awesome, like, grip and feel and commitment. Super awesome.
“If you miss the train tracks [driving line] though, it's pretty sketchy and I think that's why we saw some red flags, meaning if you just missed the line. But yeah, the commitment level is so high.”
When it comes to the official track record, McLaughlin stated, “Yeah, we'll destroy that.”
On the softer alternate, red sidewall tires, his expectation is hitting into the 1m6s range, pending the expected track evolution.
One drawback of the ultra-fast speeds, though, is if it will make Sunday’s 95-lap contest make passing even more challenging and create a single-file race.
“Potentially,” McLaughlin said. “The hard thing about a place like this is when you have like a new surface, the surface gets rubbered in on the racing line, so we don't know how it's going to race with passing.
“It might be a little bit less grippier offline than we're used to, but at the same time it could be okay. It just might limit some of the passing that we were able to do back in the day.
“The deg created so many different passing opportunities that we probably shouldn't have on this track. Now with the new resurface and the speeds that we're hitting and the brake distances are shorter, I think that it might be a little harder.”
Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward compared the feeling of driving on the new surface to Barber Motorsports Park.
“Oh, it's badass,” said O’Ward, who was seventh in the test. “Reminds me of a bit of like a Barber, just very high commitment.
“Turn 9 is going to be flat today with reds on, for sure. It's just so much better.“
Although the grip level is extremely high, there is also low degradation with the tires, which is something the Mexican embraces.
“That'll be a great thing where you can really go balls to the wall,” O’Ward said. “Enough of this fuel save shit and tire save.”
Colton Herta, a two-time winner at the Monterey circuit, hailed it “fast as heck.”
“You're probably looking at, in qualifying if the track evolution keeps going how it is and we get reds, maybe a high 1m05s,” Herta said. “Two seconds faster than the previous track record.”
That time that Herta suggested has the field dancing with the unofficial track record of 1m05.5880s, which was set in 2007 by Sebastien Bourdais during Champ Car Spring Training.
Can it be broken?
“Yeah,” Herta said, “it's possible.”
