Schmidt-Peterson Motorsports driver James Hinchcliffe finished the first part of IndyCar qualifying for the 100th Indianapolis 500 at the top of the timesheets.
One year after the horrible practice crash that forced him to sit out the rest of the 2015 IndyCar season, Hinchcliffe set the pace on the first day of qualifying with a 230.946mph average on Saturday, at the wheel of his Dallara-Honda Indycar.
Drivers set four consecutive laps to form an aggregated total, with the times on day one determining who will fight for the 10-33 grid positions and who will run in the Fast Nine pole position shootout.
Ryan Hinter-Reay was second, ahead of Will Power – who was the lead Chevrolet runner – and Helio Castroneves. Townsend Bell, Josef Newgarden, Mikhail Aleshin, Carlos Munoz and Simon Pagenaud also made it to the Fast Nine session.
2016 rookie Alexander Rossi sat in the top nine until the very end of qualifying on day one, dropping to 10th. Marco Andretti, Juan Pablo Montoya, Scott Dixon and Ed Carpenter were next up.
JR Hildebrand, Takuma Sato, Conor Daly, Sage Karam, Tony Kanaan and Sebastien Bourdais completed the top 20.
Max Chilton crashed in practice and failed to set a laptime, as did Pippa Mann. She suffered a rear wing end fence failure on her first qualifying lap. Gabby Chaves was the other driver to not set a time.
