IndyCar Indy GP: Palou tops second practice, Rahal Letterman Lanigan shines again

With the entire field working on setups for primary tyres, the times were remarkably close in the first 25 minutes.

Felix Rosenqvist, who has taken two poles on the Indy road course, was top for Arrow McLaren with a 1m10.4167s, until with 17 minutes to go he was deposed by Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi Racing, by 0.0343s, who was using all the curbs and some of the grass.

Again, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan cars looked strong, with both Christian Lundgaard and Jack Harvey in the top eight.

Also running strong were the other Ganassi cars, with Marcus Armstrong, Scott Dixon and Marcus Ericsson in the top 10.

Pato O’Ward then jumped to the top with 1m10.2604s in the #5 McLaren, and Armstrong improved to go second, but then Lundgaard grabbed P1 by just 0.0024s on a set of fresh primaries.

With five minutes to go, Palou became the first driver to duck under 70 seconds with a 1m09.9383s, an average speed of 125.545mph.

Patricio O'Ward, Arrow McLaren Chevrolet (Photo by: IndyCar Series)

That was three-tenths faster than Lundgaard, and no-one could match that, despite late improvements from Harvey and Team Penske trio Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgarden and Will Power.

Helio Castroneves’ Meyer Shank Racing lost an engine, pulling off after eight laps with a smoking brand-new Honda.

Qualifying will begin at 9pm BST.

IndyCar Indy GP FP2 results:

Cla	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'09.9383			125.545
2	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'10.2580	0.3197	0.3197	124.974
3	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren	1'10.2604	0.3221	0.0024	124.969
4	Marcus Armstrong	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'10.3022	0.3639	0.0418	124.895
5	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'10.3038	0.3655	0.0016	124.892
6	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	1'10.3174	0.3791	0.0136	124.868
7	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	1'10.3395	0.4012	0.0221	124.829
8	Will Power	Team Penske	1'10.3999	0.4616	0.0604	124.722
9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'10.4018	0.4635	0.0019	124.718
10	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'10.4026	0.4643	0.0008	124.717
11	Alexander Rossi	Arrow McLaren	1'10.4075	0.4692	0.0049	124.708
12	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren	1'10.4167	0.4784	0.0092	124.692
13	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti Autosport	1'10.4753	0.5370	0.0586	124.588
14	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'10.5187	0.5804	0.0434	124.512
15	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	1'10.6510	0.7127	0.1323	124.278
16	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	1'10.6982	0.7599	0.0472	124.196
17	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	1'10.7046	0.7663	0.0064	124.184
18	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'10.7077	0.7694	0.0031	124.179
19	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	1'10.7678	0.8295	0.0601	124.073
20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'10.8026	0.8643	0.0348	124.012
21	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing	1'10.8835	0.9452	0.0809	123.871
22	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	1'10.9534	1.0151	0.0699	123.749
23	Ray Robb	Dale Coyne Racing	1'11.0065	1.0682	0.0531	123.656
24	Agustin Canapino	Juncos Hollinger Racing	1'11.0330	1.0947	0.0265	123.610
25	Santino Ferrucci	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'11.1361	1.1978	0.1031	123.431
26	Benjamin Pedersen	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'11.2574	1.3191	0.1213	123.221
27	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	1'11.7210	1.7827	0.4636	122.424
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