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Autosport
Autosport
Sport
David Malsher-Lopez

IndyCar Barber: Palou leads Penskes in second practice

Yesterday’s pacesetter McLaughlin wasted no time in flirting with the 1m06-second barrier, getting down to a 1m07.0036s on his third lap and then broke through it with a 1m06.7282s on his fifth lap.
With 36 minutes to go, his nearest challenger became team-mate Newgarden, just 0.0053s behind, but Christian Lundgaard and Graham Rahal were an encouraging third and sixth for Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Lundgaard proved that RLL’s strong showing was no fluke by bouncing back into third as the times tumbled, just 0.04s off McLaughlin’s benchmark, while Callum Ilott of Juncos Hollinger Racing jumped into sixth until he was bumped down by Long Beach winner of Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Autosport and another Arrow McLaren’s Felix Rosenqvist.

Romain Grosjean, who lost most of yesterday’s session when his Honda expired, was able to climb to third spot, but that became fourth when Palou went fastest of all with a 1m06.6568s with 17 minutes to go, and then lowered the bar to 1m06.2781s – 0.45s ahead of McLaughlin – an average speed of 124.928mph.

Pato O’Ward got his McLaren into seventh, ahead of an impressive showing by Devlin DeFrancesco of Andretti, while his teammate Colton Herta made a great save at Turn 14 to pop into fifth. He trimmed his time further to scramble into second – but still four tenths away from Palou’s benchmark.

Newgarden and McLaughlin improved with less than a dozen minutes left to go 0.23s and 0.26s respectively behind Palou.

Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Chevrolet Romain Grosjean, Andretti Autosport Honda (Photo by: Michael L. Levitt / Motorsport Images)

Dixon reappeared in the top five with less than five minutes to go, 0.33s from team-mate Palou, but any further chance of improvements were curtailed by Helio Castroneves spinning his Meyer Shank Racing entry on the exit of Turn 9. That caused a red flag which became the chequered flag to end the session prematurely.

IndyCar Barber - FP2 results

P

Name

FTime

Diff

FL

Laps

FSpeed

Engine

Tire

Team

1

Alex Palou

1:06.2781

1:06.2781

16

20

124.928

Honda

P

Chip Ganassi Racing

2

Josef Newgarden

1:06.5133

0.2352

14

19

124.486

Chevy

P

Team Penske

3

Scott McLaughlin

1:06.5386

0.2605

14

19

124.439

Chevy

P

Team Penske

4

Scott Dixon

1:06.6090

0.3309

19

20

124.308

Honda

P

Chip Ganassi Racing

5

Colton Herta

1:06.6788

0.4007

16

20

124.177

Honda

P

Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian

6

Romain Grosjean

1:06.7455

0.4674

14

23

124.053

Honda

P

Andretti Autosport

7

Christian Lundgaard

1:06.7711

0.4930

8

18

124.006

Honda

P

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

8

Alexander Rossi

1:06.7808

0.5027

9

20

123.988

Chevy

P

Arrow McLaren

9

Pato O'Ward

1:06.8323

0.5542

14

21

123.892

Chevy

P

Arrow McLaren

10

Marcus Ericsson

1:06.8654

0.5873

14

21

123.831

Honda

P

Chip Ganassi Racing

11

Devlin DeFrancesco

1:06.8754

0.5973

14

20

123.812

Honda

P

Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport

12

Kyle Kirkwood

1:06.9333

0.6552

10

22

123.705

Honda

P

Andretti Autosport

13

Felix Rosenqvist

1:06.9628

0.6847

9

19

123.651

Chevy

P

Arrow McLaren

14

Callum Ilott

1:06.9705

0.6924

9

22

123.637

Chevy

P

Juncos Hollinger Racing

15

Marcus Armstrong

1:06.9972

0.7191

6

23

123.587

Honda

P

Chip Ganassi Racing

16

Graham Rahal

1:07.0372

0.7591

20

23

123.514

Honda

P

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

17

Will Power

1:07.0377

0.7596

16

22

123.513

Chevy

P

Team Penske

18

David Malukas

1:07.1437

0.8656

8

20

123.318

Honda

P

Dale Coyne Racing with HMD

19

Simon Pagenaud

1:07.1458

0.8677

9

23

123.314

Honda

P

Meyer Shank Racing

20

Rinus VeeKay

1:07.1799

0.9018

12

19

123.251

Chevy

P

Ed Carpenter Racing

21

Jack Harvey

1:07.2494

0.9713

7

21

123.124

Honda

P

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

22

Helio Castroneves

1:07.3324

1.0543

9

18

122.972

Honda

P

Meyer Shank Racing

23

Conor Daly

1:07.3750

1.0969

15

21

122.894

Chevy

P

Ed Carpenter Racing

24

Sting Ray Robb

1:07.5094

1.2313

21

22

122.650

Honda

P

Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR

25

Santino Ferrucci

1:07.5188

1.2407

7

15

122.633

Chevy

P

AJ Foyt Enterprises

26

Benjamin Pedersen

1:07.8030

1.5249

21

22

122.118

Chevy

P

AJ Foyt Enterprises

27

Agustin Canapino

1:07.8443

1.5662

22

22

122.044

Chevy

P

Juncos Holling Racing

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