David Malukas topped the opening session of the weekend in St Louis, followed by Colton Herta and Scott McLaughlin.
Malukas is no stranger to the WWT Raceway, it’s the place he picked up his career best second place finish this time two years ago, before turning up a year later and finding himself on the podium once more with a third place.
The early phase of practice was dominated by Andretti. The winner last time out in Toronto, Colton Herta led early on with a 178.411mph lap, and by a sizeable margin, almost two miles per hour ahead of his closest competitor, his teammate Kyle Kirkwood.
Following the top two was the third Andretti car of Marcus Ericsson, closely followed by fellow swede and another Andretti engineered car of Felix Rosenqvist.
A swede who didn’t have the same success is Linus Lundqvist, one of the two American Legion cars this weekend found himself in a spot of bother as he came to a halt with an MGU issue. Costing him valuable practice time as his car was forced behind the wall for repairs. Not getting back on track until there was less than 10 minutes to go in the session.
In a fairly uneventful mid-section of the opening session of the weekend, a few minor scares were the only things of note as Nolan Siegel got loose on pit entry as the 19 year old pushed the limits of deceleration.
One team who found themselves surprisingly high on the timing sheets were Juncos Hollinger Racing. Juncos, who have not been able to achieve a result better than 15th on an oval so far this year, found themselves with both cars in the top 10 with less than 15 minutes to go.
With the 78 car sitting just one point outside the leaders circle, Juncos have called up IndyCar’s favourite reserve driver and oval expert Conor Daly to replace Agustin Canapino for the remainder of the season, such is the oval heavy closing section, with five ovals in the final six races.
As the session came to a close, times started to tumble, as big moves came at the top of the field. Championship leader Alex Palou jumped up into the top three with ten minutes to go before being replaced by two Penske drivers McLauglin and Will Power.
Herta’s early benchmark eventually fell with only seven minutes of the session left to go as the driver in the news in the past week, David Malukas, went to the top.
The 21 year-old was pushing the limits of his car and the World Wide Technology Raceway as he got up close and personal with the outside barrier late into the session, he managed to find the funny side however as he was laughing following the session about how he was getting a bit loose through turns three and four on his fast lap. He managed to avoid it however and set the best speed of the session with 178.830mph.
The highest rookie of the session was Nolan Siegel who found himself in ninth, a good result for the American who will be looking for a confidence boost after being caught out in the incident that brought out the red flag in Toronto.
