Christian Lundgaard said a month or so ago that when he’s quick in Friday’s NTT INDYCAR SREIES practice sessions, he’s usually shaping up to have a strong race weekend ahead. Well, I’d say if Friday’s opening 75-minut e practice session in Portland is any indication then he’s an early favorite to take the win in Sunday’s BITNILE.com Grand Prix of Portland (3 p.m. ET, NBC, INDYCAR Radio Network).

Lundgaard led the way in his No. 45 Dallara-Honda with a lap late of 58.1776-seconds. He set the time on the Firestone alternate tires which was .1470-seconds clear of second fastest, Kyle Kirkwood.

The Andretti Autosport driver circled the 1.964-mile road course with a time of 58.3246-seconds.

For the pair of sophomores, they’re hopeful this is just the beginning of what could be a nice weekend for the two Honda drivers.

Lundgaard started third here last year but spun later while running in the top five. On like tracks this season, these have been his best tracks. At Barber, he qualified sixth and finished there. At Road America he started 7th and finished there too. At Indy, he was on the pole and finished 4th with Mid-Ohio coming from 5th to finish 4th. Last month in Indy, he started 2nd and finished 4th again.

Kirkwood has been quite fast on these tracks too. The Andretti Autosport driver finished 13th last year and also won 5 of his 6 Road to Indy starts (2nd in the other) here. Kirkwood has also finished 12th, 14th, 9th, 17th and 9th on natural road courses in 2023. He spun while battling for third in Mid-Ohio and was punted while starting up front in Road America, so those finishes could in theory be better.

“Yeah, I mean, some of it,” Kirkwood said on if he can carry anything over from his Road to Indy dominance here. “Obviously I can take a lot more from last year driving with AJ Foyt Racing. It was one of our better weekends, to be honest.

“Some of these high-speed, flowy tracks tend to suit me. So if there was two categories of tracks that I think that I thrive on, it’s street courses and then high-speed, flowy tracks.

“So Here, Mid-Ohio, Laguna tend to be tracks that suit me best. Yeah, I mean, I kind of came into this weekend pretty excited, hopeful that we would be fast. Being P-2 isn’t too bad for practice one, you know. Yeah, so hopefully we just continue that trend.

“Yeah, there’s definitely stuff that I learned from my junior categories that I’m carrying on to now. I think that proved last year when I came out of the junior formulas and then went into INDYCAR here for the first time and was quick pretty much right out of the box. Almost transferred into the top 12 in qualifying.”

However, he also cautions that maybe their lap times were due to slapping on the red side walled tires sooner than most others and as a result, got a clean lap around the 12-turn circuits to where others that waited didn’t.

“Yeah. I mean, quite happy. It seemed like me and Lundgaard were one of the ones to go kind of early on red tires there,” Kirkwood said. “That probably benefited us because we didn’t get trafficked. It looked like a bit of a traffic jam out there towards the end of the session.

“Granted, the track does get a little faster as the run goes on. I was happy to get out early and get our lap in.

“We are happy with the car. We were a little bit different than our teammates, and I imagine because of that, you’ll see my teammates take a step tomorrow.”

Points leader Alex Palou (58.3555-seconds) was P3 while Pato O’Ward (58.4098-seconds), Felix Rosenqvist (58.6428-seconds) and David Malukas (58.7099-seconds) rounded out the Fast Six.

Rinus VeeKay jumped to the top of the board as the final driver on the primary tires and his lap of 58.7556-seconds second on them remained 8th best.

Rookie Juri Vips who’s making his INDYCAR debut this weekend was an impressive 15th quickest (59.0217-seconds) in his No. 30 Dallara-Honda. He turned 25 laps in the session and was just .8453-seconds behind Lundgaard’s top lap.

He was quicker than last year’s pole and race winner, Scott McLaughlin who was 16th best. Will Power (17th), Graham Rahal (18th), Scott Dixon (19th) and Colton Herta (20th) were notable also behind Vips in the incident filled session that saw Ryan Hunter-Reay have a couple of problems on track. Santino Ferrucci, Will Power and Rosenqvist each had issues too.