Oilpressure

Good afternoon from a sun-drenched Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We got here shortly after cars started running at 9:30 am, but we immediately headed to the pits.

Shortly after we got here, Kyle Larson lost control after going wide coming out of Turn One. He almost collected it, but then lost it again – skidded across the track and hit the outside wall. He was checked out at the infield care center and released.

After track activity resumed, Takuma Sato spun coming out of Turn One and had a hard hit, his car looked destroyed but my untrained eye can’t make that determination. It took a while, but he was eventually cleared and released as well.

The session was the one where they turned up the boost to the same level as qualifying weekend. The quickest time of the session was by Scott McLaughlin, who turned a lap at 232.686 mph. Before his crash, Takuma Sato turned the second-quickest lap of the session at 232.565 mph. Will Power was third-quick at 232.278 mph.

Like yesterday, there was a slew of Hondas after Power. Josef Newgarden clocked in with the ninth quickest lap at 231.229 mph.

If you notice a pattern, the only Chevys in the Top-Ten were from Team Penske. Sting Ray Robb was the fastest non-Penske Chevy in the session. His lap of 229.874 mph was good for thirteenth quickest lap of the morning.

The McLarens were all over the place. Pato O’Ward was the fastest of the papaya cars. His fastest lap was fourteenth quick at 229.735 mph. Nolan Siegel had the thirty-third fastest lap of the morning at 215.960 mph; with Christian Lundgaard in between at 228.334 mph – good for twenty-second fastest.

Alexander Rossi almost beat his entire team from last year. He came in just a tick behind O’Ward at 229.716 mph and the fifteenth fastest lap.

What does all of this mean? Absolutely nothing. But it does raise eyebrows that for the second day in a row, the non-Penske Chevys have been slightly off the pace. If this scenario repeats itself after three days of practice in May, then it might be something for the bow-tie bunch to be concerned about.

There are lots of new special 500 liveries on display this week. Hopefully, Susan can get her camera out during the afternoon session and we can post them here before we head home. She was moving a little slowly this morning, so she didn’t get very many shots.

The teams are in a two-hour break for lunch. The track and the Media Center is eerily quiet at the moment. When things resume at 2:00 pm EDT, we plan to be out there. If teams start packing up and leaving midday, we may do likewise, But I will have one more post up here before we leave. Please check back later.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 24, 2025 at 12:14 pm and is filed under Indianapolis 500. 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.