The Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda driver raced all the street and road courses on the IndyCar schedule in 2021, but this year is competing in all 17 rounds.
His oval race debut in an IndyCar, at Texas Motor Speedway last month, ended with a highly impressive sixth-place finish, but Indy’s 2.5-mile speedway has only nine degrees in banking through the turns so is a very different type of oval from TMS.
Nonetheless, Johnson was the first driver to crack the 225mph barrier today, the second day of Indy testing, and he finished up eighth fastest of the 31 participants with a best lap of 227.900.
As a four-time winner of the Brickyard 400, NASCAR’s Cup race at the Speedway, Johnson was asked if it had taken him long to grow accustomed to not needing to lift for Turn 1 now he’s in an IndyCar.
“I'm still flinching in Turn 1 and Turn 3," he admitted. "It's just a long-ass straightaway to talk to yourself and convince yourself to hold it wide open through 1 and 3!
“Ironically, T2 and T4 behave very much the same, regardless of the NASCAR vehicle or the IndyCar vehicle.”
He later added: “I feel like flat out sixth gear on the rev limiter turning into T1 or T3 was really what I needed to do, get a good sense of that type of speed, that type of G force, trust the car. No driver lifts, really flat in those really fast situations.”
All five Ganassi cars – those of Johnson, Tony Kanaan, Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Marcus Ericsson – finished the day in the Top 10, and Johnson said he believes their cars “have a lot of speed”. But he admitted that his 138 laps today saw him mainly focused on learning how to complete passes.
He said: “I think that's what we're all deep down inside focused on… to figure out how to get off of Turns 2 and 4 and make better passes…
“Turns 2 and 4 are still the key to passing regardless of series. So I'm surprised how similar and how challenging T2 and T4 can be to set up a pass. I don't think I made a pass today, like a true heads-up pass. I have some work to do to figure that out. When guys made mistakes in front of me, I was able to get them. I have some more to do to figure out passing.”
Asked if he regretted not doing ovals in his first IndyCar season, Johnson said, “I had to come to grips with things in my own fashion, gain the comfort and desire to do it. I can say sitting here and watching the Indy 500 last year, working in television, really kicked things into overdrive for me.”
Johnson said that the hand fracture he sustained in his difficult race weekend at Long Beach earlier this month had limited his physical training but that in Barber Motorsports Park he expected to be “much quicker than I was there last year”, and that his expectation for street and road courses is to "keep improving, try to work my way in the mid pack. And when we get back here I think my expectations go up quite a bit.”
