NEWTON, Iowa (July 14, 2024) – Iowa Speedway hasn’t been kind to Meyer Shank Racing’s (MSR) NTT INDYCAR SERIES efforts over the last few years and Sunday’s race was more of the same for the Ohio-based team.
Comprised of two 250-lap races that ran Saturday and Sunday, the Hy-Vee Onestep 250 featured high temperatures and tight racing with long green-flag stints that left passing opportunities hard to find.
David Malukas (No. 66 AutoNation / Arctic Wolf Honda) rebounded after Saturday’s opening-lap spin that ended his day, using a ninth-place starting spot to earn finish 13th in his fourth series race with MSR. The result was the second-best of the season for the #66 car and the best for an MSR machine at Iowa since the 2020 campaign.
Meanwhile a promising day for Felix Rosenqvist (No. 60 AutoNation / SiriusXM Honda) went by the wayside after 195 of 250 laps, as he retired with a mechanical issue. Rosenqvist, who carried Eric Church’s Outsiders Radio SiriusXM channel on the No. 60 MSR machine for the double-header, started fifth and ran in the top five for the first fuel stint of the race, but a caution saw at the end of the pit cycle saw him drop to ninth.
The schedule provides no immediate relief as MSR will head north of the border next week, wrapping up a three-weekend streak of racing with the Ontario Honda Dealers Indy Toronto, which takes place on the streets of the Canadian city. Qualifying takes place on Saturday 2:45 p.m. E.T., with the race broadcast set for 1p.m. on Peacock. The races, along with all other INDYCAR action can be heard live on Sirius XM Radio, Channel 218.
Meyer Shank Racing Driver Quotes:
Felix Rosenqvist: “We started out pretty good, we were sitting P5. On the first sequence we lost a lot, we’ll have to see what happened there. I think we were a little slow in the pits and we lost a few spots and then we lost a few on the restart. Not ideal but pretty encouraging pace.”
David Malukas: “We just finished race 2 and completed a whole race this time. The guys did an incredible job putting the car back together. Of course going into today we knew the car wasn’t going to be exactly what it was. We didn’t really have the set up and everyone had information from race 1 which we didn’t. I struggled to keep up on the restarts. Decent points day for the 66 car and we’ll go on to Toronto.”
