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Motorsport
Motorsport
Sport
David Malsher-Lopez

IndyCar Barber: Ganassi’s Palou leads Penskes in second practice

Yesterday’s pacesetter Scott McLaughlin wasted no time in flirting with the 66-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 36mins to go, his nearest challenger became teammate Josef Newgarden, just 0.0053s behind, but Christian Lundgaard and Graham Rahal were an encouraging third and sixth fastest for Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Marcus Armstrong got into the 1m06s to run third in his third race weekend for Chip Ganassi Racing before being displaced by first his teammate Scott Dixon – still looking for a win here at Barber – and then Alexander Rossi leading the Arrow McLaren charge.

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

Romain Grosjean, who lost most of yesterday’s session when his Honda expired, was able to climb into third spot, but that became fourth when Alex 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.

Dixon reappeared in the top five with less than five minutes to go, 0.33s from teammate 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 a checkered.

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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