St. Petersburg, Fl (Saturday, February 26, 2022) – Dale Coyne Racing with RWR driver Takuma Sato got caught out by another competitor during qualifying on Saturday for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. The loss of a few tenths of a second meant that Sato had to settle with a 22nd on the starting grid.
Starting: 22nd
Group 2 / Round 1
Best Lap: 1:00.2830
• Sato jumped to top part of the charts with his first lap in qualifying but then got impeded by a competitor while turning what would have been his fastest lap of the session while on the red tires.
• The two-time Indy 500 Champion was sitting ninth in his group when he entered pit lane for a set of red tires, but he would fall to 11th by the end of the 10-minute session.
Takuma Sato #51 Nurtec ODT Honda – Dale Coyne Racing with RWR
“It was a pretty tough day for our first qualifying together at Dale Coyne Racing with RWR. It’s obviously a disappointing result. It wasn’t easy this morning in practice as I couldn’t get a run on a fresh set of red tires and then someone else hit me from behind and that ended our session. So, in qualifying we didn’t get the balance quite right with the red tires and then I was blocked on my best time by another driver which made me lose a couple of tenths. At that point it was game over for us. We think we have a good race car and hopefully in the warmup we can pick up some speed and have some pace for the first race.”
dalecoyneracing.com 