INDIANAPOLIS — It’s May and race cars are back on track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. It feels right again. The NTT IndyCar Series had two 45 minute practice sessions around the 2.439-mile IMS road course on Friday which preceded the three round knockout qualifying session to conclude the day.

In the opening practice, Alexander Rossi topped the speed charts with a time of 1:09.8784-seconds in his No. 27 Honda. Rossi, got off course earlier in the session, but late in the opening practice, he went to the top. He was on the podium in both races last October and said that this session was using the baseline from then to see if it still works.

It did.

Jack Harvey moved up to P2 in the closing minutes with a time of 1:09.9646-seconds in his No. 60 Honda. This is arguably Harvey’s best track as he has three top eight results in four tries. These were the only two drivers to eclipse the 1:09 barrier.

Rinus VeeKay (1:10.0624-seconds) was third. The Ed Carpenter Racing driver won the pole for the opening race last October. Josef Newgarden (1:10.0643-seconds) was fourth while rookie Romain Grosjean (1:10.2528-seconds) rounded out the top five.

The Ganassi boys had a rough session on the speed charts in being 15th (Ericsson), 16th (Dixon), 22nd (Johnson) and 25th (Palou). Same for Arrow McLaren SP. They were 18th (O’Ward), 20th (Rosenqvist) and 21st (Montoya).

RLL was struggling with the setups as Graham Rahal (9th) and Takuma Sato (17th) were left scratching their heads.

Sebastien Borudais had an electrical problem in this practice and stalled on track. He never got back out. Alex Palou didn’t complete a lap as he had a radiator problem that they noticed before practice even started. Max Chilton isn’t here so the Carlin team didn’t turn a lap either.

2nd Practice

The second session was run with much warmer conditions. In fact, the track temps were much higher for this session in comparison to the morning one. The teams had to accommodate for that which saw this 45 minute practice be run in more indicative conditions for the race on Saturday.

Also, teams were able to use the Firestone Reds too which is why this was a vastly more important session than the opening one.

In it, we saw a mostly clean practice with the exception of Scott Dixon having a mechanical problem during practice and saw them end it early. That comes after his teammate Alex Palou having a water leak in session 1.

The speed chart though was as much about the bottom of the timing charts than the top. Dixon (23rd), Jimmie Johnson (24th) and Juan Pablo Montoya (25th) were the bottom three. Just look at the names with the three slowest times there.

Up top, you had Josef Newgarden (1:09.3323-seconds) leading the way. He was fourth in session 1. Second year driver Rinus VeeKay was P2 in his No. 21 Chevrolet with a time of 1:09.4020-seconds. VeeKay was third in the opening practice himself.

Will Power (1:09.4747-seconds), Colton Herta (1:09.4999-seconds) and Scott McLaughlin (1:09.5514-seconds) rounded out the top five.

At the moment, Newgarden, VeeKay, Herta and Power look to be the best out of anyone.