Fast Friday sees the BorgWarner turbos on the Chevrolet and Honda engines turned up from 1.3- to 1.5-bar, an increase of approximately 80hp, to enable the teams to strip out drag-inducing downforce and check out their qualifying potential for this weekend.
But today, wind gusts of up to 38mph have been registered, and they are giving the cars a headwind down the front straight, pinning the nose and therefore provoking oversteer at Turn 1, and then pushing the cars into a drift through Turn 2 before they head off down the back straight with a tail-wind. That push helped the Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet of Conor Daly trip the Turn 3 speedtrap at 243.724mph, but like so many others, he didn’t complete a full quali sim.
