Palou nearly blended into the scenery, but was still the quickest driver of the morning session. Photo: Kevin Dejewski
The second practice session for IndyCar took place Saturday morning, and it was Alex Palou that set the fastest time of the day.
The Spaniard lapped the scenic course in 1:06.2781, which is nearly the same speed as Rinus VeeKay’s pole time from last year.
Times were quite a bit quicker than Friday’s opening practice session, mostly on account of more and more rubber being laid down on the flowing course.
Teams were also testing out their qualifying setups, and most of the fast laps on the timing screen were set towards the end of the morning session.
It was a Team Penske duo that rounded out top three behind Palou, as Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin set the second and third fastest times respectively.
Scott Dixon was set the fourth fastest time, and he was followed closely by a couple Andretti Autosport drivers. Colton Herta and Romain Grosjean were the top representatives from the Andretti stable.
Overall, many of the fast cars were the same ones that looked fast on Friday’s opening session. With many teams testing here earlier in the year, there are not many huge gains to be found throughout the weekend.
Marcus Armstrong continued to impress and was the fastest rookie of the day, putting his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda in the 15th position.
There were decidedly fewer incidents in today’s session, and there only a single interruption throughout the entire 45 minutes.
That red flag came with less than a minute left on the clock when Helio Castroneves spun coming out of turn 9.
Drivers were given a single flying lap once the session was restarted, and only Pato O’Ward took advantage of the tiny bit of extra practice time on the 2.3-mile course.
Earlier on, O’Ward had another near miss when he went over the new larger curbing at the chicane. He escaped with no damage for the second time of the weekend, and is using a lot of good fortune in the process.
The next time the 27 drivers will be on track will be for knockout qualifying, which begins at 2:00 PM Central Time.
Keyword: Palou fastest in second IndyCar practice from Barber