The one and only practice of the weekend, proved to be beneficial to some and very costly for others. Nolen Siegel simply lost it and backed his car into the wall at the exit of Turn Two. The much more dramatic looking crash came much later in the practice. Kyle Kirkwood and Christian Rasmussen got together entering Turn Three. Both drivers blamed each other. There seemed to be a split in the media center, but most seem to lean toward blaming Rasmussen. After watching a few replays, I tend to put the blame on Kirkwood. Rasmussen was holding his distance from the wall, and Kirkwood seemed to me to be creeping up on him, but what do I know?
The weather today could not have been much better. Tomorrow’s forecast seems to be improving. At first, rain seemed likely on Sunday. Later in the week, it looked like the threat had been moved to Saturday. Now it’s looking like it will rauin Saturday night – in between the two races. That should make for a very green race track on Sunday, which should spice things up.
This afternoon, we spent a lot of time in the northern part of the track infield, where the Vintage Indy cars were sitting. I drooled over many cars, some replicas and some authentic, before they hit the track. There is almost nothing as pleasing as seeing and hearing cars from yesteryear.
The practice ended with Josef Newgarden (one of my two picks for a win this weekend), on top, with a fast lap of 159.430 mph. Rookie Dennis Hauger continued his late-season surge by posting the second-quickest lap of the day at 159.376 mph. Alex Palou, David Malukas (my other pick) and Rinus VeeKay rounded out the Top-Five.
Christian Lundgaard did nothing to squash the narrative that he is sub-par on ovals. He could only manage the twenty-second fastest lap of the day at 153.754 mph. Caio Collet was even slower at 151.355 mph, posting only the twenty-fourth fastest time. I was also a little surprised that Mick Schumacher was only good enough for the twenty-first fastest time. He had been on an upswing and was doing well on ovals, usually leading his Rahal teammates. Not today.
Qualifying should be very interesting. It will be cooler and in different parts of the track than it was this evening. It starts at 10:00 am local time (11:00 am EDT) on FS1, then Saturday’s race coverage starts at 1:30 pm local (2:30 pm EDT) on Big FOX.
Susan and I will be here early and plan to post on arrival. We are going to wrap this up and go meet friends for dinner at an area favorite that we went to two years ago – Paulie’s across the street from Turn One. I’ll close with a few photos that Susan took of cars on-track during Practice. Please check back tomorrow.
George Phillips
