Yahoo Autos O’Ward leads Dixon in incident-packed first practice in Detroit
The new, fast, narrow and bumpy course on the streets of downtown Detroit caused red flags aplenty, but by the end of the session, Pato O’Ward led the way for Arrow McLaren ahead of Ganassi legend Scott Dixon.
Benjamin Pedersen of A.J. Foyt Racing-Chevrolet was the first drive to complete full laps, running the extra set of primaries that all IndyCar rookies receive for road and street courses. But it was Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s rookie in the No.11 car who first ducked under the 70s barrier, setting a 1m09.9s followed by a 1m08.1s, then a 1m06.5s, then 1m05.8520s an average of 89.929mph around the 1.645-mile course. Eventually Armstrong whittled that time down to 1m05.2832, 90.712mph.
Agustin Canapino of Juncos Hollinger Racing caused the first red flag of the session. He was 1.1s off Armstrong’s early benchmark when the No.78 went long at Turn 1 and needed a restart. After 14 of the 19 Indy NXT cars ended up in the Turn 1 runoff in that series’ first session, it was little surprise that it was a scene of incidents among the 27 IndyCars taking part.
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Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Autosport-Honda beat Armstrong with his fifth lap, landing a 1m05.1620s effort and then ducked under 65s with a 1m04.9870s, a shade quicker than Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren-Chevrolet.
2021 champion Alex Palou briefly hit the top but his best effort was improved on by Colton Herta (Andretti) who hurtled around in 1m04.3840s – 91.979mph – and then Scott Dixon moved into second, 0.13s behind Herta and 0.1s ahead of Palou.
With 50mins of the 90min session still to go, Canapino slapped the wall with both sides of the car at Turn 7, which eliminated him from further participation in the session. Then Graham Rahal caused the second red flag when he ran straight on at Turn 3 and stalled as he tried to rejoin.
On his 21st lap, Helio Castroneves’ Honda engine blew due to an electronics issue, while Marcus Ericssson caused a red flag with half an hour to go after running long and stalling at Turn 1, and not long after, Scott McLaughlin also spun and needed to restart.
With 17 minutes to go, Devlin De Francesco and Palou were down the Turn 3 runoff, and needed rescuing.
At the wave of the green, several drivers emerged on alternate tires and Pato O’Ward leapt to the top with a 1m03.5436s, an average of 93.196mph, and although he followed this up with a trip down a runoff, he got back on it with a 1m03.0773s, a second ahead of new P2 driver, McLaughlin and Christian Lundgaard of Rahal Letterman Lanigan.
Behind O’Ward, the times kept tumbling, with Herta into second – albeit 0.6767s off his former Indy Lights teammate – while Will Power grabbed third, mere hundredths ahead of McLaughlin.
Kirkwood got O’Ward’s advantage to less than half a second, and then Rossi drew to within 0.3s of his teammate, as Palou and Dixon got into the top six, before the latter followed up with a lap within 0.0986s of Palou.
A late improvement by Felix Rosenqvist ensured all three McLarens were in the top six, while Callum Ilott’s final flyer slotted him into ninth, ahead of McLaughlin, Ericsson and Lundgaard.
Newly-crowned Indy 500 champ Josef Newgarden was 15th , while Romain Grosjean should have shown stronger but had his hottest lap obstructed by Pedersen, in a dire session for the Foyt cars.
Second practice for the Chevrolet Detroit GP begins at 9.00am local (Eastern) time on Saturday.
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