Oilpressure

Good morning from a very sunny and warm Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. About the only negative about this event is the parking. We’ve been lucky enough to find free parking on the street, but it requires a lot of walking. Mrs. Olipressure moves a little more slowly these days, so it took us a while to get inside the track.

Speaking of Susan, on a personal note – we did get some good news, first thing this morning. Her quarterly scans showed a spot on her liver. A subsequent PET scan showed no cancer activity, but they wanted to be sure. She had a liver biopsy this past Tuesday. The results were posted to her portal – all good! We were pretty confident it was clear based on the other scans, but this confirms it. Now we can really enjoy the weekend.

We were a little late to pit lane for practice this morning. We got there just about the time that Romain Grosjean ran into the back of Takuma Sato, as they were headed into Turn Ten. That was the second red flag of the session. Apparently Jack Harvey had a mishap to bring out the first one, but we missed that. The third red flag was brought out by Alex Palou.

In a session where some key names needed to sort some things out before Qualifying, they did not need a third of the session being whittled away by red flags.

Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin had the top speed this morning. He became the first driver to break the one-minute mark, posting a time of 59.7342. Colton Herta was again the second quick. about three-tenths behind McLaughlin. Simon Pagenaud, Alexander Rossi and Will Power rounded out the Top-Five.

Alex Palou posted the second quickest time before damaging his car late in the session. That was the only good news for Chip Ganassi Racing. Scott Dixon continues to languish, managing to post only the twentieth fastest time. Marcus Ericsson was only quick enough for thirteenth and Jimmie Johnson was twenty-fifth quick.

Josef Newgarden is still the big question mark. His last three races here, he finished first, first and second; yet he continues to be much slower than his Team Penske teammates. Newgarden posted the fourteenth fastest time for the second session in a row. He has his work cut out for him if he wants to make the Firestone Fast Six.

Qualifying starts at 12:30 EST and will be available only on Peacock.

That’s going to do it for now. We are going to grab a quick bite to eat before Qualifying, and then head for the pits. In the meantime, please follow us on Twitter. You may follow me at @Oilpressureblog or Susan at @MrsOilpressure. Please check back later.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on February 26, 2022 at 9:37 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.