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It took almost nine hours, but the NTT IndyCar Series finally squeezed in the only practice for Sunday’s Bommarito Automotive Group 500. The first fifty-two minutes of the sixty minute session were fairly benign. Then Takuma Sato brushed the wall in Turn Four, bringing out a very brief yellow.

The field was given the green flag after a brief track inspection. Then Scott McLaughlin spun exiting pit lane, causing teammate Will Power to go high to avoid the spinning McLaughlin. Unfortunately, Power went too high and brushed the Turn Two wall. It was more than a brush, because Power drifted back down onto the track, where he was collected by Marcus Ericsson.

Ericsson’s car suffered damage in the nose area and some front suspension damage. Power’s car, on the other hand, suffered extensive damage. His crew has a long rebuild ahead of them.

Graham Rahal was a victim of mysterious gremlins in his car. He only ran a total of twenty-nine labs in the practice session. His best speed was 170.407 mph, which was the slowest time of the night – even slower than Ed Carpenter’s best lap of 170.919 mph.

At the other end of the speed chart, three-time defending race champion Josef Newgarden paced the field tonight with a top-speed of 181.040 mph. Before he spun, Scott McLaughlin logged the second quickest speed of the night – 179.353 mph. Takuma Sato, Will Power and Felix Rosenqvist rounded out the Top-Five. Ironically, three of the Top-Five were involved in late-session incidents that brought out red flags.

Alexander Rossi, Colton Herta, Conor Daly, Marcus Ericsson and Callum Ilott filled out the Top-Ten in speed. Some notable names that turned in curious speeds were Pato O’ Ward (eleventh) David Malukas (twelfth), Romain Grosjean (thirteenth), Alex Palou (fourteenth), Scott Dixon (sixteenth) and Christian Lundgaard (twentieth).

The best quote of the night, was when Will Power was asked what happened. He obviously had no idea that it was teammate Scott McLaughlin that caused him to go high. He tersely said “I saw some dumba** down on the apron spinning”. He may be surprised when he finds out who caused his spin.

That will do it for us tonight. It has been a very long and disjointed day. Qualifying will now take place on Sunday morning at 10:00 am CDT, and the race will run as scheduled ar 2:30 pm CDT on Big NBC. Please check back all through the morning for reports on Qualifying. Susan also plans to have a post here sometime tomorrow. Thanks for sticking with us throughout such a long day, and please check back tomorrow.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on August 26, 2023 at 8:33 pm 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.