On Monday, over half of the NTT IndyCar Series field visited Barber Motorsports Park near Birmingham, Alabama for a private test day on the natural terrain road course.
The weather was chilly even by early spring standards, and many drivers were forced to complete a bulk of their running in the latter half of the day.
At the end of the afternoon, it was Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin that topped the unofficial timesheets in both lap time and number of circuits completed.
McLaughlin’s team-mate Will Power was only a couple tenths of a second behind his pace-setting 1:06.222 time, and the third member of the team, Josef Newgarden, completed the fifth fastest lap despite feeling a little under the weather.
The third and fourth fastest times were set by Christian Lundgaard and Alex Palou respectively, with each putting in laps faster than their team-mates.
Marcus Armstrong was the fastest rookie at the test, completing the sixth fastest time around the 2.3-mile course. David Malukas was close behind in his Dale Coyne Racing with HMD entry.
Jack Harvey was not among those taking part in the test, as he was not cleared by IndyCar’s medical team to participate.
The Briton was involved in one of the dramatic incidents during the season opener from St. Petersburg, and was taken to hospital for evaluation of his injured wrists.
He was released later that day with news that nothing was broken, but one week appears to not have been long enough to recover.
Juri Vips, who tested with RLL at Sebring late last year, filled in for Harvey and finished the day 13th out of the 16 participating drivers, completing 91 laps in the process.
Marcus Ericsson was the only driver that suffered any damage throughout the test, and part of his day was lost while his CGR team replaced a rear wing.
For everyone in attendance, the test counts as one of only two allowed private test days for the entire season. The fact that so many chose to run at the site of the upcoming fourth round of the championship shows how important it is to get their cars set up before the busy middle portion of the season rolls around.
The next race is at Texas Motor Speedway in just over two weeks’ time, and the series will return to Barber Motorsports Park on April 30, following a round on the streets of Long Beach.
