500 Practice Wrap-Up Day Two
As perfect as yesterday’s weather was, today’s was anything but. I arrived at the track around 10:00 am. It was sunny when I got out of the car and I debated whether or not to even bring my jacket. I’m glad I did. I think the warmest it got today was 64°. That was not bad when the sun was out. Unfortunately, that was only about 45-minutes into the session. The skies darkened, the wind stiffened and it was not enjoyable to be outside. The sun finally broke through around 3:00, but it remained windy and cold.
It doesn’t help that I’m under the weather. In 2005, I was diagnosed with diverticulitis. A flare-up will hit me every two years or so, but I’ve never had one in May. If you suffer from diverticultis or have someone in your household who does, you know what I’m talking about. Not only do you get weak with fever, but it is very painful. Your entire abdomen aches and it doesn’t take much to get sharp pains. As I was driving up Tuesday morning, I wasn’t feeling great – but I convinced myself I was just needing sleep, from a bad night’s sleep the night before. I declined a couple of invitations for dinner, and decided I was going to be going to bed around 8:00 pm.
When I got to my hotel room, I got chills and had fever. Fortunately, I keep a supply of the two antibiotics that I treat it with in my luggage. Last night, I had to break into it. I slept about ten hours, the fever is gone but I am hurting. Except for going out to the stands directly in front of the Media Center, I stayed inside all day. With the cold temps and me hurting, I never had any motivation to venture out.
So, enough sympathy seeking.
There were 2,542 laps turned today, about 550 laps more than yesterday. Conor Daly had the fastest speed of the day and the month at 228.080 mph. Interestingly enough, his fastest no-tow speed was only 216.177 – good enough for only 28th on the day.
Alex Palou jumped up to the second-fastest in the waning moments of the session, with a speed of 228.026 mph. David Malukas, Graham Rahal and Romain Grosjean rounded out the Top-Five. Scott Dixon, Scott McLaughlin, Josef Newgarden, Santino Ferrucci and Kyle Kirkwood made up the second half of the Top-Ten. Katherine Legge was the slowest car, but made up quite a bit of speed with a lap of 220.985 mph. Going into reverse order, the rest of the Bottom-Five was made up of Ed Carpenter, Mick Schumacher, Takuma Sato and Christian Rasmussen.
The Andretti cars fared better than yesterday. Kyle Kirkwood led the team with a speed of 225.542 mph, good enough for tenth-place on the day. Will Power was just behind him in thirteenth with a speed of 225.133 mph. Marcus Ericsson was only nineteenth quick, with a speed of 224.274 mph.
George Phillips
Please Note: On Thursday, I will not have a post-practice wrap-up. I will probably leave the track around 3:00 or 4:00 to head back to Nashville to go get Susan. We plan to be back at the track by the start of practice on Fast Friday. But I will have a post here Thursday and Friday mornings.
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