Despite winning the first three races of the 2022 NTT IndyCar Series season, Team Penske might very well be behind compared to the rest of the field as the 2022 season rolls into Barber Motorsports Park for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama on May 1st.
Many IndyCar teams decided to test at the 17-turn, 2.3 mile natural terrain road course just east of Birmingham, but Team Penske had other priorities as they focused on their superspeedway performance following last year’s dismal showing in Indianapolis 500 qualifying, plus it didn’t really work out for the team’s planning according to David Faustino, Will Power’s race engineer.
“We just didn’t love the Barber date that was available,” Faustino said. “The teams that tested at Barber pretty much had to do a bonzai [run] straight to Long Beach and we felt that was going to interrupt our Speedway prep for the Indy open test as well. So we just took a pass on that because of time and priorities.”
The team decided that testing at Texas Motor Speedway was a priority to assist the superspeedway setup work, and that paid dividends with a 1-2-4 finish to give team owner Roger Penske his 600th win in motorsports. To get Team Penske’s seventh win at Barber will be a large undertaking, but with Josef Newgarden and Power having a combined five wins at the track (Josef with three, Power with two) the team are in a good position heading into INDYCAR’s 12th race in Alabama.
Barber’s track layout has some of the most elevation changes of any track on the IndyCar circuit, with no corner on the track actually existing in an even surface. The elevation changes, particularly on the back side of the circuit with turns 10-11 and 12-13 put the car in a state of compression where the suspension is under intense load and requires massive driver commitment for the best lap times in qualifying since passing can be difficult.
Qualifying is where Faustino felt he lost the race for Power last year. Power started…
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