IndyCar drivers trying to get a handle on tires in Portland

Every IndyCar Series road and street course event poses the same question for teams to answer: Will Firestone’s sturdy primary tire compound or the quicker alternate rubber serve as the preferred tire in the race?

Arriving at the correct conclusion at Portland International Raceway is a tough proposition. It’s not due to the tires brought to the 1.9-mile road course by Firestone, but rather, the significant change in temperatures being forecasted for Sunday.

Friday’s opening practice session was a warm but comfortable 80F, and that’s predicted to slightly rise to 84F on Saturday when another practice run, qualifying and final warmup will be held. Get to Sunday where no on-track activity is scheduled prior to the 110 laps of action, and drivers and their tires will be bathed in a sun that’s expected to reach 94F – nearly 15F higher than Friday – when the lessons learned about both compounds in cooler conditions won’t help.

Teams will need to use intuition, guessing, and possibly some of what they learned at the scorching June race at Road America to select the best tire pressures and suspension settings to make the primaries and alternates last throughout each stint.

“Quite a lot of difference between both compounds, which I think is good for the race for making strategies,” championship leader Alex Palou told RACER after placing second on Friday in his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing car.

“It's going to make the race very interesting. What I don't know is with the higher temperatures, is it going to be better for the alternates or better for the primaries? You never know.”

AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas was sixth in his No. 4 Chevy and is in the same situation of having to guess what compound will be the one to trust.

“From a deg perspective, as of right now, I think it's still alternate-preferred, but that's going off of our previous data sets of previous tracks with this tire,” he said. “It's just going to get so much hotter on Sunday, so we have answers for qualifying because it’s going to be similar to today, but the race is going to be so different and we won’t be running in that heat before we get to race. We're going to have to look at Road America – different tire compound, but similar temperatures there – and model something from there.”

Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward was ninth in the No. 5 Chevy and searching for directions.

“I think it’s going to be an alternate race because I just can’t get the primaries to activate for me,” he said. “My car feels like it’s riding above the track, like, I can’t get the primary to dig in and bite. The alternates seem to work better for me. I ran them, and then re-ran them to see how they worked going a second time like we’ll use them in qualifying, to see if I could bring them back, and it was a half-second down – not close to my peak lap, so we’ve definitely got some work to figure out.”

O’Ward will need to find what they’re missing with the No. 5 Chevy before the end of the race to keep Palou from clinching the championship. Between the two title contenders, Palou was all smiles while O’Ward bristled with frustration.

They’ll have one more day to find solutions and then it’s time to settle the primary-or-alternate question in the race.

“Our car is good,” Palou added. “It's tough to get the lap time; you feel like you need to make a lot of work to get the lap time and you always need to be on the limit everywhere to try and be fast. It does not come easy at this track. That's good, but I like it that way. Fingers crossed.”