David Malukas had his best race of 2022 at Weather Tech Raceway, finishing second to Josef Newgarden. He is excited to return to the track and expects another good result.

“Things are looking up for Gateway, but it’s also a little bit of
pressure being put down because it was a really good
performance last year, so you have to come in and try to
replicate it,” the Dale Coyne Racing with HMD said in a media conference yesterday.
“Either way, though, I’m very excited. I think we have a
good opportunity to do something.”

Malukas also touched on his 2024 plans, saying the Marcus Ericsson signing with Andretti earlier in the day does not affect his plans at all. He is very confident of where he will be next season, although he gave no hints.

Much of the discussion centered around the introduction of an alternate tire for the race, the first time Indycar will use an alternate tire on an oval. Malukas thinks it is a good idea and will add to the race.

“…overall I think it’s going to be good just to add kind of more flavor to the racing with the strategy with different tires. But I don’t really know how it’s going to be. I don’t know if the dropoff is going to be massive, but you would expect it to be a little bit more than the primaries.
Overall, I don’t know, I think it’s going to be a good addition, I think, just more chaos in the race.”

I asked him if he would like to see alternate tires at all the ovals.
” Yeah, I mean, I think it really depends on how it’s going to end up — how the race is going to go. That’s going to be a really good question for afterwards.
Just going into it, not knowing how it’s going to be, I don’t
know how it wouldn’t be a good thing. It’s going to add
more variety to the strategy and more opportunities for
everybody within the field to get an opportunity to try to
make the jump and be in the front by the end of it.
As of right now, I think it should be, and I think it would be
a really good addition.
But then again, who knows. Maybe it will affect things in
the wrong way and it won’t be a good result, but I think it
will be.”
Malukas also thinks the different tire strategy could possibly make this particular race less of a fuel saving race, whuich the last couple of Gateway races have turned into.
” Yeah. I mean, quite possibly, yeah. It really just depends on how long the alternates will be able to last. If they have a massive dropoff, then most likely, yeah, you probably don’t need to do a fuel save, if
everybody need to do that extra stop.
But yeah, I don’t know. It’s something to see or if it’s going
to add more variety if the tires do start trying to fall off
quicker, then are people going to try to stay out and maybe
try to make them last and have a bigger differential from
people on new tires and old tires and then have an
experience where it’s a bit like Iowa where the lap-per-lap
distance is actually a few seconds quicker.
I don’t know. It’s something that we’ll add — maybe it’ll add
more of that possibility of not being a fuel-save race.”

The Bommarito Automotive Group 500 is Sunday at 3:30 pm Eastern on NBC and Peacock.