Ericsson, CGR Top Timing Sheets to Close Spring Training

Chip Ganassi Racing concluded spring training with Marcus Ericsson and the No. 8 Huski Chocolate Honda recording the fastest lap time across all four practice sessions at The Thermal Club. Ericsson posted a blistering time of 1:38.4223 in the morning session today on his fourth of 16 total laps.

The Ganassi contingent again finished the day with all four Hondas finishing in the top-12 of the final practice session. Marcus Armstrong and the No. 11 Ridgeline Lubricants Honda recorded the team's fastest lap time of the session, placing him in P3 position.

The team will return to Indianapolis where they will continue to prepare for the March 5th season opener on the Streets of St. Petersburg.

Marcus Armstrong: "My expectation, or at least my goal, was to be top-5 at the test. I think it went better than I expected. I got used to the car quicker than I thought. I thought there might be a day where I go, 'Woah, okay that is what it is like.' But I felt comfortable right away. Satisfaction is the killer of motorsport, so I don't want to say that I'm satisfied, but it was good."

Scott Dixon: "It was fun to get back into an INDYCAR after the downtime in the offseason. Obviously, a big thanks to everyone at Thermal for getting us out here. It's a new track, and one different to what we typically run on. Looking forward to kicking off the season. This just means we're getting a little bit closer. We'll keep working away until then."

Marcus Ericsson: "It feels great to be back here in the No. 8 Huski Chocolate Honda. We've had quite the extensive test program here over the past two days. We worked very hard in the winter to try to get different things on the set-up side where we think we can improve our package for road and street course races. We've gone through that program and I think we've found some really interesting things that will make us stronger as a team. That's very promising and of course now, we'll have a lot of data to analyze but I'm confident that we made some improvements."

Alex Palou: "This was an amazing place and I'm very happy we could come out here and test. It's been a while since Laguna, so it felt amazing to drive an INDYCAR. We've been able to achieve a lot of things we wanted to here at Thermal. I think the CGR team did a great job during the week here. We can't wait to get to St. Pete to go do the real thing now. We have four weeks to go through everything and we'll be ready to go to try to get to victory lane."