Foyt finally feeling the ‘Cannon effect’ at Indianapolis

With Michael Cannon on his timing stand, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon earned the last two pole positions for the Indianapolis 500. And with Cannon overseeing the A.J. Foyt Racing cars this year, his former Dale Coyne Racing driver Santino Ferrucci qualified within 0.228mph of Dixon as he rocked time trials in the No. 14 A.J. Foyt Racing Chevy.

By the end of the first day of qualifying, the young American would settle for P9, and not far behind him in P11, teammate and rookie Benjamin Pedersen starred on the opening day of qualifying by holding P10 for most of the afternoon. Together, they authored Foyt’s best collective effort of the season.

“We've been fast all week, which has been pretty spectacular,” Ferrucci told RACER. “We've been there and I plan to keep it there. My bread and butter is always the racing, so to qualify well, that's pretty sweet. Not a lot of cars in front of me.”

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Ferrucci says the completely retooled team is finding what it needs to challenge some of its bigger rivals.

“It's finally starting to click with everybody because there was a lot of personnel changes, myself included,” he added. “And you know, it was bit hard to get our footing. Long Beach, we had a solid race weekend. Alabama, we kind of struggled. Texas, we were doing really well, but we had a car failure. Even here, the Indy GP, the race was going really well for a while. We're missing that final little piece. And I think that having these two weeks of time spread out will give us that chance to find that little piece.”