Lundgaard Pleasantly Surprised with Top Billing in Final Practice at Gateway

By David Morgan, Associate Editor

MADISON, Ill. – Christian Lundgaard was pleasantly surprised to end Saturday’s final practice session for the Bommarito 500 at the top of the board.

After qualifying in 16^th place for Sunday’s race, Lundgaard and all of Arrow McLaren were searching for some speed as they swapped over to race trim to get their cars dialed in for a night under the lights at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway.

Lundgaard clocked in at 169.791 mph to overtake the Hondas of Chip Ganassi Racing and Meyer Shank Racing on the final practice rundown.

“We’ve kind of identified where we’ve struggled for the most part, I’d say in the last year and a half. It’s kind of nice to find, right? But at the end of the day, I didn’t really expect to be there,” said Lundgaard.

“Obviously it looks a lot better than it really is. I think we really have to talk tonight and we’ve got a long time tomorrow to investigate between the three cars what we really need for tomorrow. We found something that works for us.

“Yeah, bring on tomorrow now.”

Scott Dixon led the way for much of the session before falling to second in the waning minutes, followed by Marcus Armstrong and pole sitter Alex Palou. David Malukas rounded out the top-five.

Rinus Veekay finished practice sixth in his rebuilt Juncos Hollinger Racing Chevrolet, with the remainder of the top-10 going to Josef Newgarden, Dennis Hauger, defending race winner Kyle Kirkwood, and Will Power.

VeeKay’s team was able to get his car repaired in time for qualifying, having to replace the rear wing and attenuator in a crash that he called “probably the best crash I’ve ever had damage wise on an oval”, where he went out and timed in 13^th fastest.

“I’m satisfied with what we did,” VeeKay said after qualifying. “I think there was a little bit more pace in the car, just remembering that the last time I was in the car, the last lap I did was in the wall. That was a good bounce back for the guys.”

Santino Ferrucci fell by the wayside midway through practice when he suffered a mechanical issue on his No. 14 A.J. Foyt Racing Chevrolet to bring out the caution as he limped back to pit road.

While Ferrucci first theorized it might have been a hybrid issue, it was later discovered to be a gear box problem that sidelined him.

“Obviously we [lost] power. It made a noise. Hard to say. I had a couple of warnings on the dash that said hybrid,” Ferrucci said with a laugh.

“Like I said, we don’t know what it is. We won’t know. I just figured it was just easier to shut it down and call it a day. It’s a bummer. The Homes for Troops Chevy is really quick. I was getting better with the car. We just made our second adjustment and we were about to go to our next set of tires to do a long run and see what we had.

“Yeah, not what we want. No pit stop practice for the guys, but then again, we’ve been going six weeks straight, so hopefully they’re still in the rhythm.”

With all of the preliminaries now complete, all that’s left to do is go and race. Sunday’s Bommarito 500 will kick off at 9:00 pm ET on FOX, with an estimated green flag time of 9:25 pm ET.