DETROIT — Santino Ferrucci registered the best finish of his NTT IndyCar Series career during Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix.
Ferrucci, who started his No. 14 A.J. Foyt Racing Chevrolet 22nd on the grid, steadily worked his way forward and used a bit of strategy to make his way to the lead.
The day’s dominant driver Kyle Kirkwood passed him for the victory, but Ferrucci held off Colton Herta and Will Power to finish second.
It was the second straight second-place finish for A.J. Foyt Racing, which was second in the Indy 500 with David Malukas. It was the second straight top-five finish for Ferrucci, who was fifth at Indianapolis.
“It feels great. Honestly, the strategy plays into everything that we do, especially at road and street courses it’s very tough, and I can’t thank the team enough,” Ferrucci said. “This is more deserving of them than it is even of me. We probably drove to 11th minus the strategy just running our race.
Mike and Adam, C.J., they all made great calls on the stand to pit us when they did and got lucky with the yellow when it came out, cycled us to the front action. I had no idea I was the leader because there was cars going around the pace car in front of me, and then they stopped me, and I was like, oh, well, this is a pleasant surprise. So it was pretty cool.”
Ferrucci tried to explain the importance of the momentum to A.J. Foyt Racing.
“Man, this is a big deal for us, especially in the championship, just finding our stride,” he said. “Obviously, I think I’ve struggled a little bit more than David has last couple of races just trying to be consistent with the car and consistent with changes. We had a ton of changes going into this weekend, and we finally unloaded the car for warmup and I felt really, really happy, and we didn’t change anything going into the race.”
Ferrucci was complimentary of his team after celebrating with them on the pit lane.
“Honestly, I was just super thankful, I mean, really congratulating the boys,” Ferrucci said. “All I did was push the pedals and turn the steering wheel. We weren’t going to finish on the podium today without them and without their help. Like I said, it was more their podium finish than it is mine. Just congratulating them on an amazing job and pit lane on the stand, and a lot of screaming, a lot of yelling. It was pretty cool.”
Editor’s Note: Monday evening IndyCar officials issued a penalty against Ferrucci’s No. 14 team, which will cost them $25,000 and 25 points.
