David during practice at Infineon Raceway
The race this weekend at Infineon Raceway is the first road course event of the season. And while these types of tracks haven’t always been David’s favorite, he’s been doing a lot of testing to get ready for the race.
David started off the day with a solid practice session, spending more than half of practice in second place. After all drivers made qualifying runs during practice, David dropped a little bit on the leader board to 10th.
“We were strong today in practice,” said David. “We’ve been putting a lot of extra work into our road-racing program, so it was good to come out of practice in the top 10.”
David and the UPS team were ready for a similar result in Friday’s qualifying, but David got a little too loose in one of the 11 turns on the track, resulting in a loss of speed and momentum.
“We got loose, and I guess the good side of things is that I didn’t spin it out,” said David after his qualifying run. “I thought we had a top 15 or so run going on through the first seven or eight corners, and then we just got loose being aggressive. I just got on the throttle a little early and got loose in turn eight. If you lose even a little bit of speed here, it takes a lot to get that back. I’m looking forward to Saturday’s practice; I think we’ve got a fast car. We’ll just have to do our job and pass a lot of cars on Sunday.”
While David technically qualified 43rd for Sunday’s race, he will start 40th based on owner’s points.
