One Practice In The Books
There’s probably not a whole lot you can read into after only one practice, but it at least caught my attention that six of the top seven cars after practice were all powered by Honda. Of course, the fastest car belonged to Sébastien Bourdais, who drives a Chevy.
We’ll know a lot more after the next practice that starts at 3:00, but it’s nice to see some different names at the top of the score sheet. After Bourdais, Jack Hawksworth led the Honda brigade in P2. Then it was Carlos Muñoz as the fastest car for Andretti Autosport. His teammate, Ryan Hunter-Reay was third quick. After that, Takuma Sato completed a strong practice for AJ Foyt Enterprises, placing cars in P2 and P6. James Hinchclffe completed the near-sweep of the Top-Seven for Honda.
But you know that the Ganassi and Penske teams were just sorting out their cars. At least I hope that’s what was going on. Helio Castroneves was seventeenth quickest, while Tony Kanaan was twenty-first out of twenty-one cars.
As practice wound down, I was chatting with longtime reader and commenter, Mike Silver. Not to name drop, but while we were talking, IndyCar President of Competition, Jay Frye, came up to me to speak. We spoke about the “non-call” of last week in Long Beach and discussed the rule-changes in effect this week. One interesting point was when I asked him about having an offending car simply give up a spot in the future. He said that will be considered again, but it was the owners that wanted that option taken away four months ago. So now, it’s either a warning or a race-killing penalty. Hmmm…
Susan has now joined me as it looks like the bottom is about to fall out. If it rains, it should be cleared up before the next Verizon IndyCar Series practice. I was able to get a few photos while down in the pits. I’ll post them below. I’ll have more after the second practice. In the meantime, be sure and follow me (@Oilpressureblog) and Susan (@MrsOilpressure) on Twitter. Be sure and check back later.
George Phillips
Oilpressure 
April 22, 2016 at 2:42 pm
I’ve got my own racing adventure coming tomorrow, but I’m still envious of George and Susan. Looks like a great day for motor racing there in Alabama.
April 22, 2016 at 3:38 pm
Have fun George and Susan!
April 23, 2016 at 4:08 am
The owners wanted the option of a “give up a spot” penalty gone? Thanks for asking the man in charge the question that led to this answer. Now, it is clear that IndyCar should not have given up this option for Race Control as not having it does make the series look bad as a whole. I mean other series like F1 have it (e.g. for cutting a chicane and gaining an advantage through this), so why not IndyCar? It needs to be re-introduced quickly. If that is the lesson to be learnt from Long Beach, it couldn’t be more simple. So go ahead and do it!