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
Nº
Driver
Car / Engine
Time
Delay
Laps

1
2
Josef Newgarden
Dallara/Chevrolet
18.2420

121

2
3
Scott McLaughlin
Dallara/Chevrolet
18.2897
0.0477
116

3
8
Marcus Ericsson
Dallara/Honda
18.2992
0.0572
126

4
26
Colton Herta
Dallara/Honda
18.3363
0.0943
77

5
5
Patricio O’Ward
Dallara/Chevrolet
18.3416
0.0996
101

6
11
Takuma Sato
Dallara/Honda
18.3606
0.1186
97

7
45
C.Lundgaard
Dallara/Honda
18.4579
0.2159
106

8
20
Ryan Hunter-Reay
Dallara/Chevrolet
18.4749
0.2329
97

9
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