Juncos Racing's Kyle Kaiser has said he is fully focused on his driving and not the sponsor troubles affecting the team prior to practice for the 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500.
The Juncos car arrived in Gasoline Alley earlier this week with a lack of sponsors on the car, leaving the Dallara-Chevrolet in with just a white base colour and the #32 on the nose.
Kaiser was able to make it out onto the 2.5-mile oval for the first practice session for the Indy 500, but remains focused on doing his job on the track and not on how many sponsors the team can attract.
"I don't feel like my confidence is contingent on what the car says or what the car looks like," said Kaiser.
"If that was the case, I wouldn't be a very good driver if my driving depended on what colour the car was.
"So I go out there, I do my job, I drive the car as fast as it can go, and I let the business end take care of itself.
"Actively we are looking for sponsors to be on the side of the car, because that's what keeps the car going the track, obviously, but, regardless, the cars, if we qualify for the race, we'll be in the race."
The American believes he and the team can avoid the bump from the grid for a second successive year at the Brickyard. He said the team is putting plenty of focus on their race car thanks to the data gathered from the 2018 event, despite his day being prematurely ended by mechanical issues.
"I feel like from our perspective last year we put a lot of focus on qualifying because we had no data to go off," he added.
"So we really wanted to make sure we qualified for the race, knowing there'd be bump day.
"This year we have some data to go off, and I think we're putting a lot more focus on the race car. We're going out there really feeling the car behind traffic, they're still understanding the car and we're having to make a lot of changes to get that front grip.
"But unfortunately we had a little mechanical and just cut our day a little short, but I think we're going in the direction and our car has pretty solid pace to start."
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