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David Malsher-Lopez

Road America IndyCar: Rossi leads Herta in first practice

Despite a guaranteed 75 minutes of track time, most drivers remained on pitlane after their installation laps since they were yearning for another set of tires. The teams were granted their ‘practice’ Firestone alternates for this session, rather than second practice, but still, the drivers wanted rubber laid down to be most representative of the expected track conditions in qualifying tomorrow.

On primary tires, Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport-Honda was the first to crack the 1min47sec barrier with a 1min46.9302, but teammates Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta eclipsed him by over two-tenths of a second.

Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s latest Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson delivered a 1min46.8876 to sneak into third and also shade Grosjean, while behind the ex-F1 drivers were the Team Penske-Chevrolet drivers Will Power, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, with defending Road America winner Alex Palou of Ganassi just ahead of the Kiwi.

As drivers started emerging on their reds with little more than 20mins to go, Helio Castroneves spun his Meyer Shank Racing-Honda down at Canada Corner and stalled, bringing out the red flag.

With 14mins to go, the green waved once more, and Newgarden delivered a 1min46.1714sec to go top, the first driver to run a 136mph lap, and lowered it next time by to 1min46.0594. The second Meyer Shank car of Simon Pagenaud moved up to fourth and then third next time by.

However, as everyone was out on reds, the leader board quickly changed, with Herta bursting to the top with a 1min45.7361sec, and McLaughlin making a spectacular effort to go to 1min45.9.

Then Rossi’s second flyer on reds pushed him 0.1334sec ahead of Herta to set a 1min45.6027sec, while Power’s 1min45.8592 made him fastest of the Penskes, fastest Chevrolet driver, but was still a quarter second off Rossi’s benchmark. It left him third, until Ericsson went fastest of the Ganassi drivers to move ahead of him.

In fact from third through eighth, it was Ganassi-Penske-Ganassi-Penske-Ganassi-Penske followed by ‘ex-Penske’ in the form of Pagenaud.

Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist both got their Arrow McLaren SP-Hondas into the top dozen, split by rookie Devlin DeFrancesco. Teammate Grosjean was left with an unrepresentative red-tire time as he had been on his second flyer when the session was red-flagged for Castroneves.

In the battle for Rookie of the Year honors, current points leader Christian Lundgaard was second fastest (behind DeFrancesco) and 13th overall for Rahal Letterman Lanigan-Honda, while Callum Ilott was an impressive 15th for Juncos Hollinger-Chevrolet, as he made his return to action after skipping the Detroit GP to rest his broken hand.

Simona De Silvestro’s return to IndyCar road course action for the first time since 2015, might look disappointing at first, in that she was 3.15sec off the ultimate pace. However, her team Paretta Autosport is in a technical alliance with Ed Carpenter Racing, and she was 1.8sec off Conor Daly and only 1sec behind Rinus VeeKay.

Second practice begins on Saturday at 9.45am local (Central) time.

P

Name

FTime

Diff

FL

Laps

FSpeed

Engine

Tire

Team

1

Alexander Rossi

1:45.6027

1:45.6027

10

13

136.837

Honda

A

Andretti Autosport

2

Colton Herta

1:45.7361

0.1334

10

14

136.665

Honda

A

Andretti Autosport w/Curb-Agajanian

3

Marcus Ericsson

1:45.8050

0.2023

14

15

136.576

Honda

A

Chip Ganassi Racing

4

Will Power

1:45.8592

0.2565

12

14

136.506

Chevy

A

Team Penske

5

Alex Palou

1:45.9140

0.3113

15

17

136.435

Honda

A

Chip Ganassi Racing

6

Scott McLaughlin

1:45.9316

0.3289

12

15

136.413

Chevy

A

Team Penske

7

Scott Dixon

1:46.0494

0.4467

14

15

136.261

Honda

A

Chip Ganassi Racing

8

Josef Newgarden

1:46.0594

0.4567

11

14

136.248

Chevy

A

Team Penske

9

Simon Pagenaud

1:46.1108

0.5081

12

15

136.182

Honda

A

Meyer Shank Racing

10

Pato O'Ward

1:46.3426

0.7399

11

14

135.885

Chevy

A

Arrow McLaren SP

11

Devlin DeFrancesco

1:46.3834

0.7807

19

21

135.833

Honda

A

Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport

12

Felix Rosenqvist

1:46.5185

0.9158

10

13

135.661

Chevy

A

Arrow McLaren SP

13

Christian Lundgaard

1:46.5510

0.9483

20

20

135.620

Honda

A

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

14

Romain Grosjean

1:46.6454

1.0427

13

17

135.500

Honda

A

Andretti Autosport

15

Callum Ilott

1:46.7679

1.1652

15

16

135.344

Chevy

A

Juncos Hollinger Racing

16

Jack Harvey

1:46.9495

1.3468

10

14

135.114

Honda

A

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

17

Conor Daly

1:46.9676

1.3649

14

16

135.091

Chevy

A

Ed Carpenter Racing

18

Graham Rahal

1:46.9721

1.3694

12

13

135.086

Honda

A

Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

19

Takuma Sato

1:47.0431

1.4404

13

15

134.996

Honda

A

Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR

20

David Malukas

1:47.2820

1.6793

15

17

134.695

Honda

A

Dale Coyne Racing with HMD

21

Kyle Kirkwood

1:47.2981

1.6954

19

19

134.675

Chevy

A

AJ Foyt Enterprises

22

Rinus VeeKay

1:47.7352

2.1325

11

11

134.129

Chevy

A

Ed Carpenter Racing

23

Jimmie Johnson

1:47.7692

2.1665

11

22

134.087

Honda

A

Chip Ganassi Racing

24

Dalton Kellett

1:48.0727

2.4700

15

16

133.710

Chevy

P

AJ Foyt Enterprises

25

Helio Castroneves

1:48.1719

2.5692

12

12

133.587

Honda

A

Meyer Shank Racing

26

Tatiana Calderon

1:48.6710

3.0683

13

13

132.974

Chevy

P

AJ Foyt Enterprises

27

Simona De Silvestro

1:48.7490

3.1463

18

20

132.878

Chevy

A

Paretta Autosport

 

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