Ilott takes Arrow McLaren to the top in Thermal session three

A busy night of work by the Arrow McLaren team paid off for Callum Ilott who posted the fastest lap during the two-hour test session Saturday morning at The Thermal Club.

Ilott’s 1m38.778s lap was just enough to demote Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou—fastest in both Friday sessions—by a modest amount (+0.052s), and behind them, another quick driver from Friday, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Christian Lundgaard, was further adrift (+0.287s).

“Arrow McLaren did a great job to set it up like they have,” Ilott told RACER. “We did a lot of work over overnight because there was one guy who is quite quick (Palou) that we all needed to catch. I think that was a job well done this morning.”

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin was fourth (+0.293s), Ilott’s teammate Pato O’Ward was fifth (+0.341s), and Palou’s teammate Marcus Armstrong was sixth (+0.602s).

Beyond the pleasant mid-70s weather and lightly overcast skies, the main item of interest Saturday morning was the downtime required to fix Turn 5, which started breaking up and took quite some time to repair the crumbling surface.

“I was one lap short of that happening,” Ilott added. It was all fine after; they did a good job to repair it.”

The final test session of the event takes place from 1-3 p.m. PT on Peacock, and the day closes with qualifying starting at 5 p.m.

Full results to come