After two weekends off, the NTT IndyCar Series returned to action today at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course in Lexington, Ohio. The scenic 2.258-mile, 13-turn road course offers a little bit of everything from elevation changes and high-speed corners, to tight corners and a challenging entry to pit lane. This is the 39th time that IndyCar will race here, as the second half of the season gets rolling.
In Friday’s lone practice session, it was Josef Newgarden that laid down a best lap of 67.054 seconds as the 27 drivers combined to turn 673 laps. The two-time champion led the way for Team Penske as teammates Scott McLaughlin (10th) and Will Power (14th) did not have the same pace.
“The car feels really good,” Josef said. “I think the temperatures definitely made the trap speed low, and it felt very difficult to drive the car today to bring it up to temperature. I’m relatively happy. I think our car was good off the truck.”
Newgarden enters this weekend with all of the momentum. The Penske ace won is coming off his million-dollar win at Road America and is the defending race winner at Mid-Ohio. He won the race from pole position, something that has become a trend here. Four out of the last five races here have been won by the pole sitter, including the last three. That is something to keep in mind for qualifying tomorrow.
Alex Palou is surprisingly still winless this season, after eight races. The reigning series champion was 2nd fastest today, with Chip Ganassi teammate Marcus Ericsson just behind in 4th. Between those two was Felix Rosenqvist, who continues his impressive season in the No. 7 Chevrolet for the Arrow McLaren SP team.
“We did an experiment in that first practice session and it felt pretty good,” Felix said. “We just couldn’t get clean runs on the black Firestones. Ending the session P3, I think we were competitive on the red tires. Like always, the session was just messy, so we will go back and see what happened. But this was a positive start to the weekend.” Rounding out the top five in practice today was Andretti Autosport’s Colton Herta.
Pato O’Ward and Alexander Rossi were not far off in the opening session, with the surprise of the day being David Malukas for Dale Coyne Racing. The rookie continues to impress, once again outperforming his veteran teammate Takuma Sato, who had an off-course excursion late in the session.
There are many drivers that have performed well here over the years, most notably…
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