Four-time series champion Sebastien Bourdais has stated he was unable to recognise the performance of his own car during a tricky qualifying for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama.
Firestone has also been experiencing tyre issues with throughout the weekend whereby the track surface has been tearing up the tyres, causing confusion amongst the teams as to which compound of rubber performs better over the other as well as a raft of difficulties when trying to setup the car.
This has led to lap times being distant what they were last season, up to almost to a second.
The #18 Dale Coyne driver believes the pace has been in the car throughout the practice sessions, but all of them were heavily interrupted with many drivers causing red flags due to their own off-track excursions.
Bourdais admits he is still very happy with his own performance in getting through to the Fast Six for the first time in 2019 after two difficult sessions in St.Pete and CoTA, eventually putting his Sealmaster-Honda fifth on the grid.
"I still feel like the team has been up there for most of the weekend, better or worse," said the Frenchman."It's been in the mix. Just obviously a lot of red flags, a lot of weird circumstances, very difficult to put the lap together in general.
"I'm still struggling really to feel the Firestones. We've lost just about a second a lap from last year to this year in fairly similar conditions.
"I'm just not recognizing my car. We really haven't made any changes. We just kind of circle around the same base. Just difficult to hit it right, to do a good job.
"I feel like, yeah, I left some on the table. I'm not quite sure what else to do. Ultimately it's the best qualifying effort we've had this year, which I guess I don't know if I should be proud or sad about.
"Yeah, I mean, it's a track we historically have been really strong on. It's the first Fast Six of the season, so we'll take it. See what we've got tomorrow."
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