In the last session before qualifying for the last road course of the season, Scott McLaughlin found himself on top with familiar faces joining him in the top three in what was an action packed practice session.
Second was David Malukas who joined him on the front last weekend in St Louis, followed closely by the winner last time out Josef Newgarden.
Practice two in Portland started in a fairly relaxed manner, with Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Christian Lundgaard topping the early timings.
It didn’t take long for everything to spring into action however as Romain Grosjean made a carbon copy of Kyle Kirkwood’s incident at turn one yesterday, firing over the kerbs in T1 and T2.
Not long later the first red flag of the session came out courtesy of Will Power. The veteran pushing the limits early on, ran wide at the final corner, using too much of the runoff, which eventually turned to grass.
The Penske driver ended up locking up, spinning round and blocking the entrance to the support series paddock, bringing out the red flag as he could not get the car started.
It was a fellow Dane who bumped him off the top spot as rookie Christian Rasmussen went to the top with ten minutes of the session gone.
Scott Dixon found himself encountering traffic in two consecutive laps, at the exact same place in turn seven. First by Rinus Veekay, then second, and far more dangerous, was Josef Newgarden who was dawdling at a very slow speed right on the racing line.
The high speed chicane of turns 10 and 11 didn’t take long to claim their next victim as Sting Ray Robb, fresh off a career best INDYCAR result, found himself in the barrier and bringing out the second red flag of the session.
When the session resumed, it was another driver who had a strong result last time out on top, Nolan Siegel. Swifly replaced by someone who did not have as strong of a result in Malukas.
His teammate Felix Rosenqvist wasn’t as lucky, making hard contact with the inside wall in turn one, puncturing his tyre and sending him flying over the same kerb both Grosjean and Kirkwood found themselves at odds with this weekend. This brought an end to his session.
The first driver to dip into the 58s was Alexander Rossi who took the top spot from teammate Pato O’Ward with less than 20 minutes left of the session.
Herta wasn’t best pleased with Siegel later in the session, a certain unimpressed gesture shown as the main championship contender found himself being held up and not in a happy place with his car, struggling for pace until eventually dialing it in and putting the car fourth with 9 minutes to go.
With only ten minutes left in the session, Toby Sowery brought out the third red flag of the session as he found himself stopped in the turn one runoff zone.
The session was quickly resumed as Sowery was able to get the car restarted. A few drivers then proceeded to follow the example and make use of the runoff zones, Veekay taking a page out of Dixon’s book as he made use of the support series paddock, avoiding an incident.
The other driver to go off was returning driver Juri Vips making his first start of the season in one of the four RLL cars, spinning at turn three before heading the wrong way down the track so he could get into a safe space to spin the car back round to face the right direction.
