INDIANAPOLIS (May 9, 2025) — AJ Foyt Racing had, to quote Santino Ferrucci, “an up and down day” at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course today as teams prepped and qualified for the Sonsio Grand Prix.
Ferrucci’s day started well in the No. 14 Sexton Properties Chevrolet when he was fourth quickest in the first practice, despite missing the second half of it. A clutch issue had developed and the team spent the next couple hours diagnosing and eventually fixing the problem to get a couple laps in the second practice before qualifying.
In the first group of Round 1, Ferrucci was fourth quick and exclaimed afterwards, “This car is a rocket ship! I could have gone faster!” However, after the second round, he was disappointed because he didn’t have quite the same grip level when he needed it. He qualified 11th which is still his best qualifying run of the season to date.
“Obviously, quite an interesting up and down day,” said the 26-year-old. “Had a clutch issue so we missed a good part of FP 1 (Free Practice 1) and almost all of FP 2, but the guys just stuck with it. Had a really good qualifying to get an advance (out of Round 1) but kind of missed it a little bit in the second round. We’ll look back and see kind of why. I definitely left some time on the table in my driving and I just don’t feel like I started the tire very well either. So, kind of bummed not to advance to the Fast Six but we have a good starting spot for tomorrow, and we’ll be good.”
David Malukas was not happy with his car in practice and was disappointed in his qualifying run.
“Not much really to say other than it wasn’t good,” said the 23-year-old, who will start 26th. “We kind of knew going into it, the pace wasn’t really there as it was at Barber. I think Barber hurt quite a bit, just because we had a very good car, but here, obviously we never really had the confidence all day. Then we came into qualifying, I think that it was just a lot worse than we were even expecting. so not great. We just need to keep our heads down and keep working at it and hopefully find some time.”
Although Malukas struggled today, one can’t count him out for the race. As proven at Barber last weekend (where he also struggled the first day), his team was able to give him a competitive race car. The engineers will have the night to figure out a fix for the No. 4 AJ Foyt Racing Chevrolet which they can test in the morning warmup.
Alex Palou continued his dominance of the NTT INDYCAR Series by winning the NTT P1 Award, his second straight of the year. Rounding out the Firestone Fast Six were Graham Rahal, teammate Louis Foster, Scott McLaughlin, Devlin DeFrancesco and Josef Newgarden.
The Sonsio Grand Prix will be broadcast tomorrow afternoon on FOX starting at 4:30 p.m.
