Elkhart Lake, Wisc. (11 June 2022) – Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) drivers Helio Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud took on the longest circuit on the NTT INDYCAR SERIES calendar – 4.0-miles – for qualifying on Saturday at Road America.

Pagenaud will start 11th in the No. 60 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda while Castroneves will start 16th in the No. 06 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda for Sunday’s Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America.

MSR came into the weekend with a strong record of success in qualifying at Road America having qualified on the front row in 2020 and third in 2021. Working through a range of setup adjustments in practice on Friday and finding additional pace on Saturday morning during Practice 2, both MSR machines were tuned for qualifying.

Castroneves unfortunately just missed out on transferring out of the first round after posting a 1:45.621-second lap,  which was just one-tenth shy of the cutoff. Castroneves was locked in at 16th for Sunday’s race.

Pagenaud had a strong qualifying run, advancing from the first Group and into the Top 12 for the second race in a row for MSR. With rain threatening, the field took to the track for the 10 minute Top 12 session, with Pagenaud setting several promising laps on the way to carding a quick time of 1:45.275-seconds to secure a sixth row start for Sunday’s race.

The Sonsio Grand Prix at Road America will have live broadcast coverage on NBC starting at 12:00pm ET with the green flag set for 12:45pm ET. SiriusXM will also host live IndyCar radio coverage on XM Ch. 160.

Driver Quotes:

Simon Pagenaud:
“We’ve made big improvements all weekend and we managed to get into the fast 12, which I’m really happy about. I think the whole group at Meyer Shank racing did a great job to be in the fast 12. I’m surely going to find four hundredths of a second on the data that would have put us P8, but honestly P8 to P11 is where we have stacked up this weekend. There’s a big game on tire degradation this weekend, and we don’t know yet which tire will be best in the race and that’s really where we are at this point. I don’t think the starting position really matters too much because we’ll see a big game on tire choice tomorrow.”

Helio Castroneves: 
“The car was pretty decent this morning, but when it came to qualifying, the car started to have some understeer on the reds. Unfortunately, on such a long track if you miss it just a tiny bit, that’s it. We missed it by literally a tenth (of a second) to be in the top six of our group. At the end of the day, we’re going to fight to do everything we can for the AutoNation / SiriusXM machine to get up to the front.”