Following delays, the hybrid era of IndyCar started on Friday at Mid-Ohio as the drivers and teams took to the track with it for the first time under competitive conditions.
Ahead of practice, it was confirmed that Marcus Armstrong, Pietro Fittipaldi and Felix Rosenqvist would be hit with 6-place penalties for Sunday’s race following unapproved engine changes.
David Malukas led Nolan Siegel and Linus Lundqvist in the early stages.
The first red flag was thrown when Agustin Canapino’s engine gave up, losing him valuable track time.
Rain started to fall in the second half of the session, with Marcus Armstrong and Jack Harvey spinning off on to the grass at turns 8 and 2 respectively as it became a little bit too wet for the dry tyres. A red flag had to be thrown to fire the Kiwi’s car back up.
There was a scary near-miss in The Esses section as Felix Rosenqvist came across a very slow moving Christian Rasmussen on the racing line. The Dane was parked by race control in the pits for 5 minutes because of it.
Once again, Alex Palou led the way despite the big change coming into this weekend. A 1:07.0650s for the championship leader put him almost half a second clear of Alexander Rossi and Marcus Armstrong.
Herta, McLaughlin, Rahal, O’Ward, Rosenqvist and Kirkwood were the other drivers within a second of the benchmark time. Championship contender Will Power was 10th.
It was only P19 for Scott Dixon as the Kiwi started the weekend quietly yet again. Debutant Toby Sowery did a very solid job, placing P21.
