IndyCar hit the track at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway for the only practice session of the weekend, ahead of the dual 250-mile races scheduled for Saturday and Sunday.
Pato O’Ward, fresh off his strong performance at the Indianapolis 500 last weekend, logged the fastest lap during the session at 24.789 seconds and 181.532 MPH.
Gateway is unique in that is an asymmetric, 1.25-mile oval with low banking. The cars switch back to their high-downforce configuration for this race, making for considerably different driving styles to the 2.5-mile oval that the drivers ran just five days before.
Will Power ended the day in second, showing that Team Penske is set to bounce back from their uncharacteristic problems throughout the two weeks of running at Indianapolis.
Simon Pagenaud, winner of one of the two races at Iowa – the year’s other short oval – was not as high up the order as he would have liked, ending the day in 18th position.
The 2016 series champion fell to fifth in the points after a disappointing Indy 500, and will look to rebound this week in an attempt to stop Scott Dixon from running away with the championship.
Dixon ended the session in third, and the rest of the field is well aware that you should never count out the five-time champion no matter what type of track is being run.
Takuma Sato did not seem to be too fatigued from the endless media responsibilities he has had over the past week, putting in the fifth fastest time on the day.
Rinus VeeKay, who was running in the top three at the Indy 500 until he had a mistake on pit road that cost him two laps, was the second fastest rookie on the short oval, ending the day in ninth.
Ryan Hunter-Reay was the only driver to have any car troubles during the session, and was only able to complete 32 laps before time expired.
The weather is set to cool off drastically overnight heading into Sunday, leading to what could be substantially different track conditions for the two afternoon races.
The drivers will complete a single qualifying session tomorrow, with the first lap setting the order for the first race of the double-header, and the second lap setting the order for the second.
Qualifying begins Saturday at 12:00 EDT (17:00 BST), and race one will take place that afternoon at 15:45 EDT (20:45 BST).
