The second day of practice for the Indianapolis 500 took place on Wednesday, though it was delayed by a weather system that lingered in the area longer than expected.
After having most of the first day of practice rained out then waiting over five hours for the rain to stop and the track to dry in the morning, drivers were finally allowed to head out on track at 3:05 PM.
Small rain showers continued to cause short caution periods throughout the afternoon, further interrupting the team’s test plans and leaving only two short hours of total green flag time.
In that time, Scott McLaughlin was the driver that set the fastest time. He completed a lap of the 2.5-mile oval in 39.2168 seconds at an average speed of 229.493 MPH.
The Kiwi ran 78 laps total, of the 2,084 laps that were turned by the entire field, and was among the busiest drivers in the 34-car field.
Will Power ran the second fastest time and Josef Newgarden set the fourth fastest lap, making for a strong Team Penske representation at the head of the time charts.
Colton Herta slotted into third place, breaking up the Chevy-powered group with a quick lap in his Andretti Global Honda.
Rounding out the top five was Alexander Rossi, giving Arrow McLaren some confidence in the early days of the two-week event.
Tom Blomqvist turned the most laps of anyone, completing 105 laps, just over half of the 500-mile race distance he will be tasked with on May 26.
Takuma Sato was one of only a few drivers that was testing different qualifying setups during the day, giving his RLL team early data to prepare for this weekend’s upcoming qualifying runs.
The other members of his team followed the typical gameplan for this point in the week, which is to evaluate different setups that work well under race conditions among traffic.
With that in mind, not all drivers were able to complete a lap with a nice aero tow from another car. Which means that time chart is possibly even less representative than a normal practice day.
Even so, the couple hours of track time that was available was extra valuable to the five rookies attempting to run their first Indy 500.
Tomorrow’s third day of practice has already been extended beyond the originally scheduled times, and will be run from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.
Drivers will surely use the entirety of the lengthy day to get in as much practice as possible, especially considering the weather forecast for Friday, the last day before qualifying, is trending towards even more rain.
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