Written by Archie O’Reilly
IndyCar was back on track at the Milwaukee Mile for the first time since 2015 as Team Penske’s Will Power and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Linus Lundqvist partook in a Firestone tyre test at the track on Wednesday.
The mile-long short oval returns to the calendar in 2024 after eight seasons away from the schedule. It makes its return as a double-header on 31 August and 1 September as IndyCar makes a second trip to the state of Wisconsin following its June visit to Road America.
“The track has not changed very much,” Power said, speaking of Milwaukee, where he was victorious in 2014 on a weekend that he also took pole position en-route to his first championship. “It felt very similar to when we last raced here almost 10 years ago. It’s a really cool oval, because it’s low banking, which is good for our car.
“It’s really good for racing. I’m excited to be coming back. We get to do a double-header and I think it will be a good race - it’s always a good race around this place.”
The races at Milwaukee next year will mark the penultimate weekend of the season, meaning they could be crucial in the championship fight. Power expects that “the fans will be in for a real treat” given the growth of competitiveness in IndyCar. “You never know who is going to win the races,” he added. “It will be a big part of the championship. It should be fun.”
Meanwhile, Lundqvist banked some more valuable oval experience in an IndyCar as he gears up for his first complete season after completing three races for Meyer Shank Racing in Simon Pagenaud’s absence in the second part of 2023. This included running a race weekend on the short oval at World Wide Technology Raceway.
“This place is great,” he said after his first experience of the 120-year-old Milwaukee facility. “I think everybody is very, very happy to be back. Obviously it’s my first time here, but I have been watching this race for many, many years, and re-watching some of them now. They have created some very exciting racing, so I can’t wait to be back here for race day.
Lundqvist also completed a rookie test on the oval at Indianapolis Motor Speedway last week. He is already getting down to work with his new team ahead of 2024 and relishing furthering his learning of the different track types ahead of the campaign.
“It’s pretty bumpy but it’s pretty fast,” Lundqvist continued on Milwaukee. “It is really a short oval. I did my rookie orientation programme last week at Indianapolis Motor Speedway - an oval, but a very different kind of oval. So it just very much highlighted the differences in all of the places we go to here in IndyCar.”