IndyCar held its second practice session from Long Beach early Saturday morning, allowing all 27 drivers to make final preparations before qualifying later in the day.
Clouds were thick and temperatures were cool for the early morning session, leading to potentially unrepresentative track conditions for the drivers.
Despite the cool and grippy track surface, many of the drivers were on track for a majority of the 45 minute time slot, which led to traffic troubles as simulated qualifying laps were run.
Kyle Kirkwood was able to cut through traffic the best, and set the fastest time of the day. He lapped the 1.97-mile course in 1:06.4731, a hair faster than the fast time from Friday.
Colton Herta joined his Andretti team-mate at the top of the charts, setting a lap of 1:06.4886 that was good enough for the top spot until the final minute of practice.
Christian Lundgaard was third on the scoreboard, followed by Felix Rosenqvist, making for a Honda-dominated session that was the complete opposite of Friday’s practice run.
Theo Pourchaire continued to impress in his first IndyCar weekend, completing a lap just over a second off the fastest drivers and ending 19th in the morning session.
Turn 8 proved to be the corner that gave drivers the most trouble, with the track having been ground down and smoothed out ahead of the weekend’s races.
The inside curbing was moved back as well, which led to drivers pushing harder through the off-camber right hand turn as they tried to set up a good run down East Seaside Way.
Will Power pushed so hard early in the session that he slid sideways and broke a toe link on the concrete walls, necessitating a lengthy repair job on pit lane before he could turn more laps.
Once he was back on track, the two-time champion lost the rear end again in Turn 8. The second mistake was more costly, however, as he nosed his Team Penske Chevy into the barriers and momentarily brought out the red flag.
Power lamented his mistakes, and said that he would need to look at the data to see why his car was breaking loose so late into his throttle application.
The next most troublesome corner was Turn 9, which still has a large bump in the braking zone that led to multiple drivers running long into the runoff area.
Everyone was able to get started again without the assistance of the safety crew, and Power’s short red flag was the only one of the session.
Santino Ferrucci was only able to turn six laps during the morning run, as he was forced to pull his AJ Foyt Chevy behind the tire barriers after suffering an electrical problem on the front stretch.
The next running for IndyCar is a knockout qualifying session at 11:25 AM Pacific Time, which is predicted to take place under sunny skies and much warmer track temperatures.
