Andretti Autosport’s Herta narrowly pipped Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward to pole position in the closing seconds of qualifying on Saturday, but was one of many drivers to spin – both in practice and in Fast 12 qualifying.
“It's been one of the tougher tracks to get a hold of,” admitted Herta. “It's almost like there's very little feedback from the wheel, so you're seeing guys spin and you just don't really know it's going to happen, which was the way it was for me a few times.
“I had more problems [on Saturday] than I did yesterday as far as off tracks and whatnot. I think it's just hard to get the cars in the operating window. It seems like some cars like different tires than others.
“It's just a very strange feeling, at least for me, inside the car. I'm sure it's different team to team. For me, it's a very strange feeling at the wheel. I think it shows by how many guys have been kind of trickling off the track, just having weird spins.”
Herta got to within three tenths of Dario Franchitti’s track record, set in 2000, and said he was reveling in the grip it offered for the low-fuel runs: “Obviously the speed is there in the track. They did a great job with the repaving. Super smooth.
“The more rubber that goes down, we were just going quicker and quicker and quicker.”
Following a wild weekend so far – in which series frontrunners Alex Palou, Scott Dixon and Will Power have all suffered big shunts – fellow front-row starter O’Ward predicts more chaos in Sunday’s race.
“Do I see it being eventful? Absolutely,” he said. “I don't know how chaotic it will be in terms of yellow. Obviously looking back at what it was today, it looks pretty savage.”
He thinks that the high grip on the racing line was what was leading to so many errors when drivers overstepped the mark, and believes he lost his pole position shot by doing just that at Canada Corner in the Fast Six.
“I see it being there's maybe a lane and a half of very high grip,” O’Ward explained. “But you go off that, and it's like ice. I think that's also why there's just been a lot of excursions.
“You miss it by just a tad, and it's like, ‘What happened to the car?’ I just got a little wide in Canada [Corner] and by then you can’t really back off so I kinda just rode through it, but that’s where we lost it a bit.
“To extract the lap time, especially now with the new pavement, there is so much more grip, but it's only in the line. You have to commit so much into the corners where a lot of the times it kind of bites once you're already committed.
“I think that's why you see a lot of spins, a lot of guys going off, just a lot of random snaps. It makes you feel like there's unlimited amounts of grip, but there's obviously limits to everything.”
