Coming off an impressive podium finish at Toronto, Ryan Hunter-Reay led the four-driver lineup of Andretti Autosport in Saturday qualifying at the Edmonton Indy, the 10th round of the 17-race IZOD IndyCar Series.
Hunter-Reay, the 30-year-old Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., driver, will start seventh for Sunday’s 90-lap Edmonton Indy on the new 2.25-mile tarmac circuit at City Centre Airport after a clocking a lap of one minute, 18.667 seconds in the second round of qualifying. However, the driver of the No. 28 Team DHL/Circle K/Sun Drop Citrus Soda Honda/Dallara/Firestone entry was upset when he jumped from his mount Saturday afternoon, as he felt he was blocked by Oriol Servia in the last two laps of the 10-minute qualifying session. Hunter-Reay, a third-place finisher at Toronto, believed he had the opportunity to transfer to the Firestone Fast Six round for a chance at the pole position.
Rain washed out all of the practice runs on Friday and Saturday’s cool weather made for some difficult track conditions at the new 13-turn road course.
Takuma Sato won the pole position for Sunday’s Edmonton Indy which will began at 12:45 p.m. (MDT) and televised live on VERSUS TV at 2 p.m. (EDT).
Hunter-Reay will be the lone Andretti Autosport driver starting the top-ten with his seventh position.
MARCO ANDRETTI, #26 TEAM DR PEPPER CAR
Will start the race in 19th position
“I’m obviously disappointed with the qualifying result for the Dr Pepper car today. We had a decent run going when the caution came out - we came in and made a couple changes but the No. 26 car just wasn’t strong enough to make it on to the second round. We’ll make more changes tonight and hopefully come out stronger for the race tomorrow.”
MIKE CONWAY, #27 TEAM @FOLLOWANDRETTI CAR
Starts the race in 20th place
“We’ve definitely got work to do. We’re just lacking grip. The tires just never really felt like they’re new tires. It’s not good to start that far back in the race. There’s just no temperature in the tires, so we were trying to generate the heat. We’ll see what we can do tonight and hopefully move up the field tomorrow.”
RYAN HUNTER-REAY, #28 TEAM DHL/ CIRCLE K/SUN DROP CITRUS SODA CAR
Starts the race in P7
“We threw three laps away because we were stuck in traffic. I felt like it was intentional by Oriol [Servia]. The sportsman-like thing to do would have been to move over. Before that, we had some good laps there. The race is tomorrow, so we’ll just have to work hard to move up from seventh at the start in the DHL/Circle K/Sun Drop car.”
DANICA PATRICK, #7 TEAM GoDaddy.com CAR
Will start the race in 22nd place
“Without having had any practice time yesterday, I think we got the most out of the GoDaddy car that we could. We had two solid practice sessions today but the car was inconsistent during our qualifying run. I believe we will be better tomorrow during the race.”
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