WEST ALLIS, Wis. — Heavy showers overnight soaked The Milwaukee Mile, preventing the rescheduled first race of the Snap-On Tools Makers and Fixers 250 NTT IndyCar Series race from resuming at 8 a.m. Central Time. (9 a.m. Eastern Time).
Track drying continues, but INDYCAR released a revised schedule for Sunday’s activities, which is now a true doubleheader.
The race was red-flagged for rain at 3:20 p.m. CT. At that time, Pato O’Ward was the leader after 90 laps followed by Felix Rosenqvist, Alexander Rossi, Josef Newgarden and Christian Lundgaard
Jet dryers took the track for close to two hours and had the track nearly completed, but there remained areas of wet spots on The Milwaukee Mile oval that could not be dried in time and the race to resume with sufficient daylight.
“Maybe we could have had finished this is it had resumed now,” O’Ward said. “There is still more race to go when we are done, plus another 250 miles to go after that. Let’s hydrate well overnight and come back and finish it off.
“Now that we are going to complete the whole thing, there are obviously two strategies that come into play. From the 50 or so laps we were supposed to get, I wasn’t going to plan on pitting again. I think we had at least 40 or 45 laps of fuel left.
“I’m always ready to go, man. I don’t even need caffeine.”
Christian Lundgaard said he is more of a morning person than a night person, but will be read to go.
“We drove our way to third early and then Rossi and Newgarden got us on undercuts,” Lundgaard said. “It will be interesting to see where people get us on strategy. We have to see how that really works out. If we had gone today just to 50 percent race distance, they may not have pitted. But if we go to full distance, the race will play out.”
