The first day of IndyCar’s two-week build-up to the Indianapolis 500 was held on Tuesday.
Teams and drivers were given six hours of uninterrupted track time, where they could turn laps as desired.
Weather was very cooperative, with pleasant temperatures and partly cloudy skies giving teams the perfect conditions in which to test detailed setups.
The first driver on track was last year’s winner Alex Palou, with many others joining him in turning laps right off the bat.
Most drivers who turned laps in the first portion of the day were making short runs and simulating qualifying efforts.
As the day went on and the track surface warmed in the afternoon sun, packs of cars began to form and drivers felt out what it was like to run in dirty air.
After six hours on the clock, Palou ended up fastest of all. The Chip Ganassi Racing driver’s best time was 39.8342 seconds at an average speed of 225.937 MPH.
Palou did come to pit lane suddenly earlier in the afternoon after he described a ‘clunk’ inside the cockpit, and his CGR team took the car back to the garage area to inspect for any damaged parts.
After quick inspections did not find the source of the issue, the crew began disassembling car further and still could not find any problems.
Palou went back on track with 15 minutes remaining, putting faith in his crew that there were no issues on his #10 machine and immediately clocked the fastest laps of the entire day.
Marcus Armstrong was the fastest until Palou’s late lap, and ended the day second quick. Conor Daly was third quick, just ahead of former Indy 500 winners Josef Newgarden and Scott Dixon on the timesheets.
Lots of laps
All 33 drivers turned at least some laps during the lengthy session, although a few were not able to complete as many as they would have liked.
Rookie Dennis Hauger did not complete anything more than an installation lap until nearly five hours into the day. The team suspected a water system problem and had to work on the car in the garage area much of the day.
He was able to get his Dale Coyne Racing Honda up to speed as the shadows moved across the track, however, and completed 12 laps.
Ed Carpenter also spent the entire first half of the session out of his car, but ended the day with 56 laps under his belt in the #33 entry and was 16th quick on the day.
In all, 1,996 laps were turned by all 33 drivers. Alexander Rossi spent the most time on track, with 116 laps logged to his name alone.
The fastest no-tow speed was set by Kyle Kirkwood with Will Power second on that list, showing that the Andretti cars will likely have plenty of pace come qualifying this weekend.
The only stoppages were short periods for track inspection, with no incidents on the first day of official practice.
With three more long practice days to come before qualifying begins, there is a lot of prep work yet to come ahead of the biggest race of the year.
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