INDIANAPOLIS (Aug. 11, 2023) — The struggle continues for AJ Foyt Racing on the road and street courses as drivers Santino Ferrucci and Benjamin Pedersen will have their work cut out for them in the Gallagher Grand Prix tomorrow.

In the 90-minute morning practice, Ferrucci was 18th in the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet with a lap time of 1 minute, 10.48 seconds. However, in the first round of qualifying, he posted a lap time of 1 minute, 10.64 seconds (124.287mph) which put him 21st on the starting grid.

“Obviously just with the qualifying, you’re two and a half tenths off of advancing and you’re P11, so it’s tight here at Indy,” said Ferrucci. “We’re just two-tenths off in practice from being in the top five, so yeah, that’s all we need.”

Pedersen improved his time of 1 minute, 11.38 seconds in practice to running a lap of 1 minute, 11.29 seconds (123.152mph) in qualifying and he will start 27th.

“Unfortunately, not the result we were hoping for as a team for both cars,” Pedersen said. “We were trying a lot of different things in practice 1 to get the car ready. Unfortunately with both cars, we couldn’t quite get it right for qualifying but we have one more practice today to try and figure out what will be a good package for the race and see what we can come up with to finish the day as strong as possible.”

Graham Rahal won the pole with a lap time of 1 minute 10.1132 seconds (125.232mph). His teammate Christian Lundgaard was second. Rounding out the Firestone Fast Six were Alexander Rossi, Pato O’Ward, Devlin DeFrancesco and Romain Grosjean.

The Gallagher Grand Prix will be broadcast tomorrow on the USA Network starting at 2:00 p.m. ET and will be streamed live on Peacock.

A.J. Foyt chats with son Larry during the morning practice as Santino Ferrucci watches his teammate rookie Benjamin Pedersen on track. It was Foyt’s first time back to the track since the Indy 500 when Ferrucci finished third.