MADISON, Ill — Pato O’Ward has a great chance to make up ground this weekend in the NTT INDYCAR Series Championship. The Indy 500 Rookie of the Year, fresh off a sixth place finish, currency sits third in the standings. On Friday, he led the way in the lone Indy Car practice session of the weekend.

O’Ward, turned in a lap of 181.532 mph in his No. 5 Chevrolet at the World Wide Technology Raceway which was good enough for P1. The man he’s chasing in the points, Scott Dixon, was third at 180.822 mph in his No. 9 Honda.

Dixon, has five top two finishes in seven tries this season and two podiums in his last three starts around the 1.25 mile St. Louis area race track.

Will Power (180.961 mph) was second on the speed charts but his teammates were 12th (Josef Newgarden) and 18th (Simon Pagenaud). Both Newgarden and Pagenaud swept the last doubleheader weekend in Iowa, which is also a short oval, but no wine has come outside of the top five at Gateway either and at this pace, they have a lot of ground to make up for qualifying on Saturday.

Conor Daly (180.581 mph) started in the top three of both Iowa races and has a top six in both Gateway starts was fourth while Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato (180.581 mph) rounded out the top five.

The Andretti guys struggled with Colton Herta being the lone representative in the top 10 in ninth. The rest were 11-16-17-19. Jack Harvey in their alliance car was sixth which was promising. He had a top 10 at Indy and seventh in both Iowa races.

The field was tight. From first to last was a little over a second apart. Also, the top seven speeds belonged to seven different teams too.

Who’s happy?

Scott Dixon, Conor Daly, Will Power and the Arrow McLaren SP cars are happy. They all liked the way that their cars felt after Day 1.

“I think we’re in a really good place with the No. 59 Gallagher Carlin Chevrolet for the races this weekend at World Wide Technology Raceway,” said Daly. “We went out and did our qual sim pretty early in the session, and then the track just continued to get quicker as practice went on. We knew that was going to be the case, but we wanted to make sure we worked through everything we needed to with only one practice session. The tire seems to be a little different and it’s creating a different feel, but obviously we’re still quick, which is nice. It feels really good to roll off the truck again with a quick car, and so far it’s really just been an incredible effort by the Carlin team. I love this track so much, and with how strong we were here last year and how the car felt today, I’m feeling really good about where we are.”

Dixon too is happy with how his No. 9 Honda feels.

“It felt pretty good out there in the PNC Bank Honda,” said the current INDYCAR points leader. “We ran heavier fuel runs and then a few qualifying simulations there at the end of the session. We had to chase the balance there just a bit. We had quite a bit of understeer, so it was nice to be able to dial a bit of that out near the end. We just need to make sure we get qualifying right because this format really bites you when you get it wrong like it did in Iowa. At least in Iowa, it was set up more for passing, whereas it’s more difficult here, we think. Top three is a good start and we’re happy, but you have to wait and see for tomorrow.”

Will Power

“I’m happy with how that session went for the Verizon team. We ran a lot and did some pretty long runs there to understand the car. We didn’t have to change much because the Verizon Chevrolet was pretty good out of the box. I think we are pretty good, but I also ran a lot by myself. So, I’m not really sure where we are at in a pack. But overall, I’m happy with what we had today.”

McLaren boys

“We put a lot of very valuable work in that session,” said the fastest driver of the day Pato O’Ward. “We did everything we wanted to do to prepare for tomorrow’s qualifying and race. There’s so many little things that go into it that make a perfect race, so we want to make the best out of it. This Arrow McLaren SP crew gave us some really strong cars to roll out with, and I think it was just fine-tuning from there. I ended the day really happy, and I think we will be ready for qualifying tomorrow.”

“It was a good first session,”‘rookie Oliver Askew said. “It’s nice to be back in St. Louis and to welcome the fans back, as well. I always love driving around here, so looking forward to building on that practice into qualifying tomorrow. Arrow McLaren SP and Chevrolet did a great job preparing us for this weekend with the quick turnaround. We are ready to go.”

Who’s Not?

Ryan Hunter–Reay

“We spent the session today battling some brake issues and weren’t able to put a run together. It’s unfortunate given that was our only practice session. We’ll see what our teammates had to say and use that to help guide us. Our focus is on putting together a strong race setup and doing what we can with the little time we got today.”

Josef Newgarden

“It wasn’t a great session for us. The Hitachi Chevrolet has speed; we just weren’t able to find everything we wanted in that session. It’s hard having only an hour to get ready for qualifying and two races. I’m just glad they were able to give us a practice session that was close to race conditions. But I still want more. Now it’s time to go sit with the engineers and figure out a plan for tomorrow and Sunday. I know we will have the Hitachi car ready to go, and I’m excited to race.”

Graham Rahal

“It was a tough day. I am just not happy with the balance of the car. I don’t feel confident in either end of the car and don’t know what the limits are. From the very get-go, the car didn’t feel right, but obviously there is more mass that we need to deal with. It just feels like on our end, we’re missing a lot. Takuma (Sato) put in a good lap there, and I don’t know how. I need to look at the data because it’s not feasible for me. The short ovals are challenging for us at the start. It’s going to take work to get in the ballpark, but we did it at Iowa, so we will do it here.”

Charlie Kimball

“Maybe not the practice session we wanted for the No. 4 Tresiba Chevrolet. We were pretty quick early on in the session and right through the middle. On our last set of new Firestones, we had some traffic, and it was a little disruptive, so not really able to maximize the speed of the car. But the 14 with Tony (Kanaan) was pretty quick, so we’ll look and see what the Big Machine Vodka car did as far as setup changes, apply that overnight and get ready to qualify and race one of two tomorrow.”