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Charles Bradley

IndyCar Iowa: Oval ace Newgarden fastest in first practice

Newgarden, this year’s Indianapolis 500 winner, topped the 90-minute session around the 7/8-mile oval with a best lap of 18.242s, a speed of 176.428mph. He has led 1,056 laps and has four wins to his name in 12 starts here.

Ed Carpenter set the early pace at 172.678mph for his own team, 0.3mph ahead of series dominator Alex Palou (Chip Ganassi Racing). The latter’s team-mate Marcus Ericsson then took over P1 at the 10-minute mark with 173.811mph.

A flurry of quickest laps then unfolded from Ryan Hunter-Reay (ECR), Colton Herta (Andretti Autosport) and Newgarden, with the latter the first into the 176mph bracket with 176.428mph, which would remain as the quickest time of practice.

Teams spent much of the session evaluating tire degradation, with cars on used tires losing massive speed on Iowa’s well-worn asphalt. Even Newgarden was lapping over 25mph off his fastest time.

Agustin Canapino brought out the first yellow just after the halfway point when he spun his Juncos Hollinger Racing entry at Turn 1 after lighting up the tires exiting the pits, fortunately not quite into the path of Alexander Rossi’s Arrow McLaren.

Conor Daly, who was again subbing for the sidelined Simon Pagenaud at Meyer Shank Racing, was one of the few to take new rubber in the middle of the session, jumping to fourth with a lap of 174.003mph.

With one-third of the session to go, more new tires appeared: Ericsson took second at 175.887mph and Pato O’Ward – whose Arrow McLaren team was one of the few not to test here – went P4 with 175.470mph. He then displayed strong 5-lap and 10-lap pace on his run.

Herta came close to grazing the wall at Turn 4 with 20 minutes remaining but got away with it. His team-mate Romain Grosjean then had a near miss with Palou at Turn 3.

Inside the final 10 minutes, a quick second yellow was thrown as Santino Ferrucci ran high through Turn 2 in his AJ Foyt Racing entry.

Penske’s Scott McLaughlin took new tires at the resumption and leapt to P2 with 175.968mph, 0.0477s off team-mate Newgarden, which works out at 0.5mph. Takuma Sato did likewise, taking sixth with 175.288mph, and Toronto winner Christian Lundgaard (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) took seventh in the final two minutes.

Ericsson, who was third fastest, completed the most laps at 126.

Qualifying starts at 8:30am local time (9:30am ET) on Saturday, where the grids for the races will be set by each driver’s first and second tours of a two-lap run.

Cla Driver  Car / Engine   Time   Delay   Laps 
2 Josef Newgarden Dallara/Chevrolet 18.2420   121
3 Scott McLaughlin Dallara/Chevrolet 18.2897 0.0477 116
8 Marcus Ericsson Dallara/Honda 18.2992 0.0572 126
26 Colton Herta Dallara/Honda 18.3363 0.0943 77
5 Patricio O'Ward Dallara/Chevrolet 18.3416 0.0996 101
11 Takuma Sato Dallara/Honda 18.3606 0.1186 97
45 C.Lundgaard Dallara/Honda 18.4579 0.2159 106
20 Ryan Hunter-Reay Dallara/Chevrolet 18.4749 0.2329 97
60 Conor Daly Dallara/Honda 18.4962 0.2542 74
10  9 Scott Dixon Dallara/Honda 18.5026 0.2606 122
11  30 Jack Harvey Dallara/Honda 18.5287 0.2867 107
12  12 Will Power Dallara/Chevrolet 18.5735 0.3315 116
13  06 H.Castroneves Dallara/Honda 18.5946 0.3526 84
14  7 Alexander Rossi Dallara/Chevrolet 18.5957 0.3537 103
15  10 Alex Palou Dallara/Honda 18.6027 0.3607 101
16  33 Ed Carpenter Dallara/Chevrolet 18.6194 0.3774 81
17  28 Romain Grosjean Dallara/Honda 18.6226 0.3806 102
18  18 David Malukas Dallara/Honda 18.6715 0.4295 116
19  29 D.Defrancesco Dallara/Honda 18.6826 0.4406 83
20  15 Graham Rahal Dallara/Honda 18.7234 0.4814 120
21  21 R.van Kalmthout Dallara/Chevrolet 18.7346 0.4926 94
22  27 Kyle Kirkwood Dallara/Honda 18.7825 0.5405 72
23  77 Callum Ilott Dallara/Chevrolet 18.8539 0.6119 84
24  78 Agustín Canapino Dallara/Chevrolet 18.9816 0.7396 88
25  14 Santino Ferrucci Dallara/Chevrolet 19.0233 0.7813 110
26  6 Felix Rosenqvist Dallara/Chevrolet 19.0974 0.8554 93
27  51 Sting Ray Robb Dallara/Honda 19.1447 0.9027 83
28  55 B.Pedersen Dallara/Chevrolet 19.3157 1.0737 92
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