The Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis weekend kicked off for the Verizon IndyCar Series with two practice sessions on Thursday. The defending winner at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway road course, Will Power, set the quickest lap in the first practice session at 1 minute, 9.8943 seconds. Scott Dixon improved from that in the second practice, topping the session with a time of 1 minute, 9.8943 seconds.
The top three of the first session was identical to the podium of last year’s race with Power followed by Graham Rahal and Juan Pablo Montoya. 0.1756 seconds behind Power, Rahal in the Honda-powered Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing machine was the only driver to split the four Chevrolet-powered Team Penske cars as Simon Pagenaud was fourth and Helio Castroneves fifth.
The top seven of the first session was completed by two more Chevy-powered cars of Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden before the second-quickest Honda driver Marco Andretti in eighth place.
Power’s time from the first session remained the quickest of the day until the final minutes of the second session when the defending series champion Scott Dixon set the quickest time. Simon Pagenaud set his quickest lap of the day in the second session, losing 0.1613 seconds to Dixon. Only 0.0002 seconds behind Pagenaud, Graham Rahal completed his good first day at the IMS road course with a third place of the second practice. The RLL Honda driver Rahal was followed by the Chevy drivers Sebastien Bourdais in fourth place and the first session’s quickest Will Power in fifth place.
Mikhail Aleshin was the second-quickest Honda driver in the second session in sixth place. The top 10 was completed by the Chevy of Josef Newgarden in seventh place, the Honda of James Hinchcliffe in eighth place, the Chevy of Juan Pablo Montoya in ninth place, and the Honda of Ryan Hunter-Reay in tenth place.
In addition to the 21 full-season cars, the Angie’s List Grand Prix of Indianapolis has four additional cars in the field that will also take part in the Indianapolis 500 two weeks later. The quickest of those was last year’s Indy Lights champion Spencer Pigot in his second race weekend for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing; 12th in both sessions.
This weekend also sees last year’s rookie of the year Gabby Chaves returning to the Verizon IndyCar Series. Just a day before the race weekend at Indianapolis started, it was announced that he will be driving the No. 19 Dale Coyne Racing machine in the two Indianapolis races, replacing Luca Filippi. Chaves was 16th in Thursday’s both sessions.
Kalle Tyynelä