Kyle Larson gets first taste of IndyCar, Indy 500 speeds in IMS rookie test

INDIANAPOLIS — Tony Kanaan woke up Thursday morning surprised by jitters deserving of the last Sunday in May. Jeff Gordon – the only modern-day driver to win five times on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval – found himself with sweaty palms as he roamed pitlane.

Neither would be in the cockpit. Both felt the unique weight of the moment.

“But it does make my life a lot easier when you have a superstar (driving for you), so that does make me look good,” said Kanaan on Thursday afternoon from the IMS media center, sitting next to Kyle Larson, Arrow McLaren’s 31-year-old IndyCar novice. “He’s a complete race car driver. Probably out of his generation, the best I’ve seen.

“He tries different cars – as I have been lately, and I know how much I struggle – and he wins in everything. I think he’s just one of the best race car drivers in the world right now.”

Kanaan’s goal Thursday, in his first day at the racetrack as his team’s new sporting director, was to get Larson to tune out all that noise and just drive. Larson, after all, was turning his first laps of any kind in an IndyCar machine at the Racing Capital of the World.

The 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner sat through a morning engineering debrief and realized the extreme level of information overload being lobbed at the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion. Larson had done nothing more than a few hours in a simulator, a shop tour and a couple seat-fittings − and made sure to steal a private moment − before slinking into the cockpit of Arrow McLaren’s No. 6 Chevy to begin his rookie orientation program.

“He’s got a wheel with 25 buttons, a weight-jacker, the front bar and rear bar, and then you have telemetry you can analyze, and engineers, they’re trying to give you all of that, and it’s just way too much,” Kanaan said. “So I let them all talk, and then when he went to change, I went into the drivers’ lounge and said, ‘Don’t worry about that. Just enjoy the racetrack.’

“I didn’t want him to miss that first moment. It’s extremely special. I still remember my first time here. And also – he’s here to pass the ROP. There’s too much we can overthink, so why are we going to feed him all of that right now, when we’re going to come back here in April (for the series Open Test), and we’re not going to remember any of it?”

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How Larson worked through three-phase ROP

And so in the simplest terms, Thursday was a success. Larson crept up from a first lap at a speed of 187.421 mph – nearly 2 mph faster than Kevin Harvick’s 2019 Brickyard 400 pole lap but 48 mph slower than Alex Palou’s fastest lap in his Indy 500 pole run this May – up to 217.898 mph by day’s end over 72 laps and 180 miles. In between, Larson satisfied IndyCar officials’ 40-lap program designed to help rookies ease into their first time on IMS’ 2.5-mile oval (10 laps between 205-210 mph, 15 at 210-215 mph and 15 more at 215 or above).

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That’s not to say it was easy. As so many drivers that have come before him describe – including the trio of future Indy 500 rookies who were on-track Wednesday – Phase 1 is often the toughest part of the day.

For the NASCAR champ and dirt track wizard who just clinched his latest title Tuesday night in the High Limit Sprint Car series’ race in Putnamville, Ind., the struggles were no different. By Lap 6, Larson had cleared the 205 mph floor (with a lap at 205.108 mph), but then was back down below it on Lap 7 (203.333). Three laps later, he found himself crossing the Yard of Bricks a tick too fast, for a lap of 211.193 mph.

“When you’re running more throttle, it’s a lot easier to hit your target, but those slower speeds, it was hard to find my timing,” Larson said. “I’d roll out onto the (front) straightaway, and then run wide-open through Turns 1 and 2, and I’d look at my dash and think, ‘OK, I’m good for 3 and 4’, and then I’d run some more throttle and all a sudden realize, ‘Oh, I’m too fast.’ And then I’ve got to slow down a lot – and vice versa. I had to play catch-up on other laps, too, and barely got by.

“I didn’t want to take too long to get up to that 205 mark, because I didn’t want to get made fun of, like, ‘Oh, why did it take you so long?’ So I put some pressure on myself like, ‘Get your confidence built up here pretty quickly.’ But I was not ready to go flat-out for a while, Building up to that speed and pace and confidence was nice to do in ROP.”

With a closing string of seven consecutive laps in the window, Larson checked off Phase 1 just 28 minutes after he turned his first lap. Splint into two stints – and with a 10-minute break – Larson completed Phase 2 in 25 minutes, a perfect 15-for-15 on laps in the window. After a lap of 213.658 mph in his first venture on-track to knock out Phase 3, Larson would then rattle off 15 straight above 215 to ease through that final phase – including seven consecutive laps in the 217s within a half-mile-an-hour.

“It was fun, and mostly what I anticipated, in a way,” Larson said of his 72-lap day that featured a fastest lap of 217.898 mph. “The speed and the grip, thankfully, didn’t feel scarier than I thought it might, but there is a feeling of just how much the car wants to pull left, and you’ve got to fight it back right on the straights – that was something I didn’t expect. And the wheel was way lighter than the simulator, but still a little heavier than what I had expected.”

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Larson's biggest challenge: pitlane

Driving slowly through pitlane caused him the most headaches. Even without other cars pitted near him – and at times, without another car on pitlane at all – Larson still noted the extreme lengths required to get his steering wheel turned enough to get the car to move into his box.

It appeared to be the topic of a lengthy conversation between he and Kanaan on the radio during one late break. It appeared that Larson stalled three straight times in an attempt to tear out of the pits. He and Kanaan later explained that Larson had simply bumped the pitlane speed limiter button, shutting it off at the wrong time. That took the car into anti-stall mode and forced his crew to wheel their rookie back into his spot and diagnose the issue.

“I didn’t think I was doing anything different leaving, but when I hit the first-gear shifter – where the pitlane speed limited is near and on the back (of the wheel) – I must’ve hit that also. And the car just wouldn’t go,” he explained. “So I’m kinda glad I did that today, so we can go and move that button to the front of the wheel so I don’t make that mistake again.”

Kanaan said that type of mistake was precisely why he wanted to let Larson just "experience" the track in as loose an environment as possible. That would let Larson come back with a full, clear evaluation of the day.

“Imagine an engineer showing him a picture of the wheel, or just having him go feel the buttons, and us asking, ‘Hey, do you want the pitlane speed limiter back here?’

“’Yeah, yeah that should be OK.’

“Well, now we actually ‘know’ it’s not, but you have to experience that,” Kanaan said. "That’s why I was trying to tell him to enjoy the day. Tomorrow, we’ll start working.”

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'We know Kyle's capabilities ... but this is different'

Larson will be at Las Vegas Motor Speedway this weekend, trying lock in one of NASCAR’s four championship-round spots for its season finale next month in Phoenix. By then, his IndyCar future will likely feel far more than just three time zones away. But as Kanaan explained – somewhat begrudgingly – the wheels are already in motion to set up Larson’s next day on-track ahead of what his NASCAR team is calling the Hendrick 1,110. That's when its star driver becomes the latest to attempt the Memorial Day Weekend ‘Double’ at IMS and Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Reading between the lines, it sounds as if Arrow McLaren is attempting to secure an additional day – at least – for Larson to turn laps on the IMS oval, before he takes part in April's Open Test.

“We have plans. That’s all I’m going to tell you, but we have plans,” Kanaan said. “There’s obviously a lot of things we’re going to talk about, but we’re hoping to get him on track before that Open Test.”

As Rick Hendrick pointed out in Thursday’s press conference, his team – spearheaded by Gordon, vice chairman and co-owner of Hendrick Motorsports – are no strangers to throwing themselves full-on into non-NASCAR projects, having worked with Chevy to develop and run NASCAR’s Garage 56 entry that ran this summer at Le Mans. As a team owner who was once vehemently against his drivers competing outside stock cars, Hendrick observed the test, often standing on HMS’ own special pit box, with IMS’ new pylon featuring a special welcome message arranged by Roger Penske.

Joining Gordon and Hendrick at the track were HMS president and general manager Jeff Andrews and Hendrick Automotive Group COO Gary Davis.

“This had been kinda a dream, and just something we were going to do, but today, we officially pulled the trigger,” Hendrick said. “When you hear it and see (the car) come by and know (Kyle’s) in it, that’s when it really, you know, gives you goosebumps. And that’s pride for me. I’m happy for him. Being here to see it and watch the speed, that’s when it came and brought it all to life.”

Added Gordon: “We know Kyle’s capabilities, and we’ve seen him drive anything and everything and succeed at it. But this is different.”

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500: Tony Kanaan, Jeff Gordon weigh-in on Kyle Larson's rookie test