Friday was Carb Day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, with drivers having one final chance to complete practice laps ahead of the Indianapolis 500.
The name of the game over the two hour session was to become comfortable in traffic and make sure everything was configured correctly for race conditions.
Every one of the 33 drivers completed laps at some point, and the track was often filled with a busy stream of cars.
There were quite a few drivers that requested setup changes to their cars, and even more that were generally unsatisfied with how their cars were behaving.
Josef Newgarden was not part of those categories, and set the fastest lap around the 2.5-mile oval. His lap of 235.687 MPH was reflective of just how well his #2 Team Penske Chevy was working for him.
The reigning two-time winner of the Indy 500 will be starting from the back row after a rules infraction on qualifying weekend, but appears to have the car to drive to the front.
Takuma Sato was the second fastest of the day, although he suffered a power failure near the end of the session and had to be towed off the track.
He was followed by another veteran Scott Dixon, who was third fastest on the day.
Devlin DeFrancesco and Will Power rounded out the top five of the all-important final practice session.
Meyer Shank Racing also looked strong, placing two of its drivers solidly into the top 10.
Numerous issues for others
There were a few stoppages during the session, one of which was for a dramatic fire that poured out of the back of Ryan Hunter-Reay’s #23 Dreyer and Reinbold Racing Chevy.
Hunter-Reay had set the eighth best lap, but then pulled into pit lane and stopped quickly when he saw smoke in the cockpit.
He climbed deftly from the cockpit and fire safety crews arrived at the scene quickly.
The amount of flames coming from the engine indicate that the team will have a large job ahead of them to get their strong-performing car back into the same condition before race day.
There was a second yellow flag due to a problem on Graham Rahal’s #15, which was trailing smoke from the tailpipe down the back stretch.
The veteran, who has had a run of poor luck at the speedway in recent years, was able to drive back to the pits but was not able to complete any more laps on Friday. His RLL team will likely need to completely replace his Honda engine before Sunday’s race.
Ed Carpenter Racing suffered through a couple minor issues, including a hybrid change on Ed Carpenter’s #33 entry and a water pump issue on Alexander Rossi’s machine after he had only completed five laps.
Rossi’s car was wheeled back to the garage for quick repairs, but ultimately remained there as the team learned how big the problem actually was.
The end of Friday’s practice marks the end of all running until the race itself, which gets underway just after noon on Sunday, May 25.
