Ever since the open test at Indianapolis in April, Callum Ilott has been consistently unhappy with his Juncos Hollinger Racing car on the famous oval.
Photo credit: Penske Entertainment | Joe Skibinski
He has been consistently a long way off the pace of even the closest car in front, and the Brit has been even further away from his rookie teammate Agustin Canapino.
Ilott had done just four laps earlier today and was comfortably slowest. In fact he was over 1.3mph slower than Graham Rahal in 33rd on the Fast Lap chart. The team has now made a rather late decision to change chassis for the British driver.
Ricardo Juncos explained the decision to NBC and their worries about safety.
“Yeah, obviously is not the ideal situation, but we we have to do it because clearly there is something wrong with the actual chassis. That’s what we believe.
“After trying our best during the week, we have to make a change because it’s actually not safe the way it is now. We are always going to put safety first for our drivers and it’s always going to be that way.
“So the car we’re gonna shift to is the one we use in the open test here in April, and it’s been running with no problem. That’s what we know. So we’re gonna use that one.”
Juncos explained to Kevin Lee that they will now use the car that Ilott’s teammate Agustin Canapino drove during the open test last month.
“That’s the car Agustin Canapino used in the open test. Canapino’s Argentinean car is a different car, the one Agustin ran was actually very good.
“It’s the one we’re gonna put for Callum because this one obviously something is wrong. We we have to put safety first. The car is not running good in the whole week.
“It’s a very difficult situation. It’s not an ideal situation. We were thinking that we’re gonna fix it, but obviously we’ve got to pull the trigger at some point.”
Juncos emphasised the point the swap needed to be made because of safety races. They now face a race against time to have the car fully prepared and dialled in for qualifying.
“It’s a big challenge for the mechanics, so I want to thank them a lot. You know, it’s not an ideal situation.
“You have to check pretty much everything to make sure everything is fine, fine-tuning all the setups and the measurements and everything takes hours and hours and hours to make sure that tomorrow we get qualifying.
“It’s not the ideal situation, but I think the way it is now is not even safe. So we have to do it.”
