IndyCar: Bourdais heads KV Racing 1-2 in Mid-Ohio warm-up

Sebastien Bourdais and KV Racing underlined their inherent pace at the Mid-Ohio SportsCar Course, as the polesitter's Dallara-Chevrolet led teammate Sebastian Saavedra in the half hour Sunday morning final practice. The Frenchman clocked 66.0186sec lap to eclipse his teammate by 0.3sec and set an average of 123.129mph around the 2.258-mile road course.

Ryan Hunter-Reay was third fastest in the quickest of the Honda-powered machines, the 2012 IndyCar champion turning a 66.4616sec, but everyone's eyes were on the next pair, Scott Dixon and Ryan Briscoe, as these Chip Ganassi Racing aces will be starting 22nd and 19th respectively after major troubles in qualifying. Given the difficulty of passing at Mid-Ohio, an alternate strategy will be employed there, although caution periods haven't been seen in the Honda Indy 200 since 2011. However at least the inherent pace of the CGR cars means that any strategy that puts Dixon and Briscoe into clean air can be helpful.

The session had few incidents of note, with Schmidt Peterson Motorsport's Mikhail Aleshin having a spin at the Carousel, and then having a grandstand seat as James Hinchcliffe looped into a spin and recovery.

The relevance of these lap-times is clouded by the fact that most of the fastest times were set with the aid of push-to-pass, as drivers experimented with where on the circuit to hit the boost button. Those performing these experiments before the track had offered up its best grip at the end of the session slipped out of the top 10.

• NBCSN's coverage of the Honda Indy 200 starts at 3.00 p.m. ET, with the green flag due to wave at 3.50 p.m.