IndyCar: 2013 Detroit winners head FP2 at Belle Isle

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Simon Pagenaud and Mike Conway, who each won a round of the Belle Isle, Detroit double-header last season, were kingpins in the Verizon IndyCar Series' second free practice this afternoon.

In a session interrupted by three red flags, the Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Motorsports No. 77 car tclocked 1min17.6502sec lap to set an average speed of 108.950mph, edging Conway's Ed Carpenter Racing machine by just 0.0647sec.

Helio Castroneves continued to lead the Team Penske charge with third fastest time, almost 0.2sec ahead of teammate Will Power who brushed the wall on one of his hot laps, but nevertheless finished fourth. He was a quarter-second faster than this morning's leader, Ryan Hunter-Reay, who caused the third red flag of the session when he stopped at Turn 6. The other two stoppages were for spins by Sebastian Saavedra of KV-AFS Racing and by Justin Wilson (Dale Coyne Racing).

Scott Dixon, who won this race in 2012, was sixth for Chip Ganassi Racing, and was separated from CGR teammate Ryan Briscoe by two tenths and two cars, namely, AJ Foyt Racing's Takuma Sato and James Hinchcliffe.

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing team continued its mini-revival, as Graham Rahal again put the National Guard into P9. In fact, he was set for P2 but his final flyer was disallowed as it was set under the red flag for Hunter-Reay's stoppage.