Familiar faces lead Indy 500 practice day three, Ferrucci crashes

When the checkered flag flew after six hours of running on the third day of practice for the Indianapolis 500, it was the veteran Tony Kanaan who sat at the top in his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

The Brazilian was in the top five yesterday, and was able to top the timesheets today with a lap averaging 225.341 MPH.  Overall, speeds were down a bit from the previous day’s running on account of the warmer temperatures that made the track slick.

The Chip Ganassi cars, of which there are four running in this year’s Indy 500, were at the top of the charts yesterday and they once again showed their strength today.

By midday, they represented a perfect 1-2-3-4 on the timesheets in a display that was surely starting to worry some other teams up and down the paddock.

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Ed Carpenter Racing also continued its time at the front of the field, with Conor Daly ending the day in second place for the second consecutive day.

With over four hours complete, Santino Ferrucci had the first significant crash of this year’s event.  The 22-year-old’s Rahal Letterman Lanigan car snapped loose mid corner and sent him hard into the SAFER barriers.

Once his car came to a halt and he climbed from the car, Ferrucci was seen heavily favoring his left leg as he was helped to the medical car.  It was disclosed later that he suffered a minor foot injury and was taken to a local hospital for further evaluation.

He was running well before his accident, however, and was able to post a time that earned him third on today’s timesheets.

Crashes and near misses

Ferrucci’s crash was the biggest incident of the day, but it was not the only one and there were a few close calls in the early running.

Just as the green flag waved, the Rahal Letterman Lanigan trio headed out on track together to have a quick photo op on the front stretch.

As they drove at half speed side-by-side past the yard of bricks, a few other cars slowed behind them to allow time for everyone to get back up to a more typical pace.

Not everyone was aware of the impromptu photo pass, however, and Colton Herta came up behind some of the slower cars at nearly 220 MPH.

He ran out of room when an unsuspecting Scott McLaughlin drifted high coming out of turn 4, and was pinched into the wall.  Luckily the collision with both McLaughlin and the wall was relatively light, and both cars were able to return to the pits with only minor damage.

If either car had been in just a slightly different position, the crash could have been very dangerous and costly to the teams. All three RLL cars have been penalized for the dangerous incident and will have to sit out of the first 30 minutes of tomorrow’s running.

Shortly after that incident, Will Power left his pit box with a battery-powered cooling fan still attached to his car.

The fan fell off on pit lane and slid into a Chip Ganassi Racing crewmember, but did not cause anything more than startle.

Laps, laps, and more laps

Today was the first day that all 35 cars were able to get on track during the same session, and they didn’t waste much of the six hours of available track time.

There was plenty of pack running and plenty of practice passes on all corners of the track. In all, drivers completed 2,870 laps around the 2.5-mile oval.

Alex Palou was the driver that ran the most laps, completing 125 laps on his way to 11th on the charts.

Even Top Gun Racing got in on the action after finishing its orientation program yesterday.  The team sent RC Enerson out for a total of 50 valuable laps.

Another six-hour practice session is scheduled for tomorrow, but this time drivers will have extra horsepower at their disposal when the engines are turned up to their highest spec in anticipation of this weekend’s qualifying.

Thursday’s practice times are below: