The first day of Indianapolis 500 practice got underway Tuesday morning, kicking off four lengthy days of scheduled practice time leading up to qualifying on Saturday and Sunday.
Although the green flag was waved for practice just after the 9:00 AM, the yellow was displayed after less than half an hour due to mist in the air.
That mist slowly turned to outright rain and, despite IndyCar removing the scheduled lunch break, the rest of the day’s action was called off completely a short time later.
In the roughly 23 minutes of green flag time available, 29 drivers completed a total of 219 laps around the 2.5-mile oval. Five drivers did not get a chance to even run a single install lap.
To understand how much practice was lost, if the eight hours of track time had been available as planned, a single driver might have run as many as 150 laps on the opening day of running.
Scott Dixon set the fastest lap time in the short window that was available, turning a lap of 39.2829 seconds at 229.107 MPH in his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.
He was followed by fellow veterans Marco Andretti and Takuma Sato, who set speeds of 228.399 MPH and 225.551 MPH respectively.
Those times at the top of the charts were not representative of which drivers had outright pace so much as which teams had their cars fully ready to go for the start of the session, which ended up being the only track time available.
The shortened day was extra impactful for the entire paddock because the two open test days held last month were also almost completely wiped out due to rain on those days.
Wednesday’s forecast does look a little more promising, but there is still a 50% chance of light rain throughout the day. How much running can happen will largely depend on how effectively the IMS crew can dry out the track between rain showers.
If the weather holds off, tomorrow’s second day of practice will get underway a couple hours earlier than originally planned at 10:00 AM and will last until 6:00 PM.
