Pagenaud tops warm-up

Simon Pagenaud topped the times in the final warm-up session before today's Verizon IndyCar Series race at Long Beach.

The reigning series champion, who will start from the rear of the grid for the race after incurring a penalty in qualifying yesterday, claimed the top spot with a 1m06.6497s. That put him just over 0.2s clear of closest rival Takuma Sato, leaving Alexander Rossi – one of just two drivers to throw on a set of reds, the other being Andretti stablemate Ryan Hunter-Reay – to complete the top three.

Ganassi's Scott Dixon enjoyed a spell at P1 before eventually finishing the morning fourth fastest, just ahead of teammate Tony Kanaan.

The morning was punctuated by a few harmless spins, with Rossi finding the run-off in the opening minutes and Schmidt's Mikhael Aleshin over-reaching for grip at around the halfway mark, but the only red flag appeared in response to Spencer Pigot (below) finding the wall at Turn 1.

The ECR driver tagged the tires just hard enough to crack his front wing, but once rescued by the Holmatro Safety Team he was able to return to the pits under his own power, and the session resumed after a three-minute stoppage.