Road America tires showed the right way forward, drivers say

Some of the road races and street course events to open the NTT IndyCar Series season were snoozers because Firestone’s tires degraded too quickly or not fast enough, but there were no significant complaints coming out of the XPEL Grand Prix at Road America.

In fact, it was a rare occasion where compliments were flowing from the drivers about their race rubber.

“I don't know what Firestone has done, but I think the fact that we don't have a lot of marbles really helps the racing,” second-place Felix Rosenqvist said of being able to pass without sliding on spent rubber. “You can go off-line on the straight and there's not a bunch of crap out there. You can just run wherever and have a really good braking off line anywhere, and that's super cool.

“I think that's what really makes the racing good. Whenever you have one of those races where it's just a bunch of marbles, you can't really do anything because you're sacrificing your whole race when you go out there. Really good done by Firestone for this race. I think they nailed it.”

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“Same thing,” said the AJ Foyt Racing driver. “I think Firestone did a great job this weekend, and I think this is a track that they should kind of make a bit of a benchmark for.”

Race winner Alex Palou was the final voice on the subject.

“It wasn't that bad,” he said of tire marbles. “I actually overtook twice in Turn 1 on the outside, which normally you can't, so that was great. On the carousel, I wasn't able to overtake but I was able to get some air to then try and put pressure into Turn 12. Yeah, it was great.

“I think that helps us. It helps the series a lot. It helps the racing when you're able to just go multiple lines. Whenever you're only able to do one line, it just gets tougher and tougher to pass.”