Ghiotto making impressive start with Coyne so far at Barber

Luca Giotto was 27th and last in his first session driving an Indy car on Friday at Barber Motorsports Park. The Italian, a race-winning veteran from Formula 2 and European sports car racing, completed 39 laps around the wild road course and returned Saturday morning to turn 27 more laps and improve to 24th.

With all of 66 laps of IndyCar knowledge to draw from, Ghiotto put his 24 hours of experience in the series to good work in qualifying by claiming an impressive 21st-place starting spot among the 27-deep field. Ghiotto even out-qualified his Dale Coyne Racing teammate Jack Harvey, recording a 1m06.4788s lap in the No. 51 Honda to Harvey’s 1m06.7969s in the No. 18 Honda.

“It was a crazy experience,” Ghiotto said. “I’m happy because we kept improving, even now in qualifying we were closer to the top. The car felt good. Of course, there’s some more in myself as I still need to fully be on the limit of the car. I feel like already being 11th (in his qualifying group) and putting some cars behind us is a decent result and is honestly far more than I expected.”

As most new drivers do, Ghiotto will wake up Sunday morning and have more confidence to attack and push harder throughout the race.

“It’s been a crazy learning curve from Friday morning, and I just can’t wait for the race,” he said. “With 90 laps in the race there’s plenty of time to learn more.”