FORT WORTH, TX – The NTT IndyCar Series added a day of practice this year at the Texas Motor Speedway. See, the last few years, the series has ran a two-day show on the 1.5-mile race track. It was always a practice session in the heat of the day on Friday, qualifying following, then final practice in the evening.
This weekend, 22 drivers took to the high banked race track on Thursday night for a new two -hour session under the lights. Unfortunately, mother nature had other plans.
The first few minutes of practice was run under test conditions to test out the new pit road exit speed limit. That raises from 60 mph to 90 mph. Then, after a handful of minutes in full blown race trim, it began to sprinkle, bringing out an early caution.
After an eight minute yellow, the cars hit the track again for just a few minutes. Then, the skies opened up ending the session early.
In the abbreviated practice, Scott Dixon ended up leading the way. The defending DXC Technology 600 race winner turned in a lap of 219.308 mph in his No. 9 Honda. Dixon, won the last race of the season too in Belle Isle last Sunday to go along with four top 10 finishes in his last five Texas starts.
The Rahal/Letterman/Lanigan Racing duo of Takuma Sato (219.262 mph) and Graham Rahal (218.311 mph) were second and third respectively. Sato, has two straight top 10 finishes at Texas while Rahal has three consecutive top six results in his No. 15 Honda.
Charlie Kimball (217.503 mph) and Will Power (217.196 mph) rounded out the top five in the short session.
Honda’s look early like the ones to beat with taking seven of the top nine speeds. Three of those Honda’s belonged to Andretti Autosport while Colton Herta with their satellite team was also in the mix.
Firestone also showed up with two different tire configurations for this weekend and hoped to test them out on Thursday. If the initial tire that they were testing showed some blistering, then they had a backup plan. But, that plan never came about since not many laps were turned on Thursday.
Thursday’s Practice Results
- 9 Dixon 219.308
- 30 Sato 219.262
- 15 Rahal 218.311
- 23 Kimball 217.503
- 12 Power 217.196
- 27 Rossi 217.134
- 88 Herta R 217.095
- 26 Veach 216.840
- 28 Hunter-Reay 216.681
- 20 Carpenter 216.653
- 18 Bourdais 215.972
- 5 Hinchcliffe 215.970
- 2 Newgarden 215.454
- 14 Kanaan 215.358
- 21 Pigot 215.275
- 22 Pagenaud 215.001
- 19 Ferrucci R 214.731
- 7 Ericsson R 214.127
- 4 Leist 213.951
- 10 Rosenqvist R 212.655
- 98 Andretti 212.180
- 59 Daly 211.772
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