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Newgarden keeps his edge in Saturday Iowa practice
Josef Newgarden figured he was the man to beat Friday night at Iowa Speedway before an untimely yellow flag ruined his chances and helped teammate Simon Pagenaud go from last-to-first.
And after Saturday afternoon's one-hour warmup for IndyCar's second 250-miler of the weekend, it looks like the defending champion remains in a class by himself.
Newgarden, who will start from the pole for tonight's race in his Hitachi Chevy, was 2mph faster than Pagenaud and the only driver in the 170mph bracket as teams dealt with 90-degree temperatures on the 7/8ths-mile oval. Newgarden ran 170.199 on his eighth lap, while Pagenaud managed a 168.515 mph circuit in his Menard's Chevy despite missing the first 20 minutes while his team worked on a couple of issues.
Scott Dixon, who went from 17th to second on Friday, wound up third quick at 168.154 mph in the PNC Honda despite brushing the wall, while Tony Kanaan jumped up to fourth at 167.787 mph in the Bryant Chevy and Takuma Sato was fifth at 166.859 in the RLL Honda.
Alexander Rossi wound up sixth fastest in the Auto Nation Honda but his car was taken to the garage with 10 minutes left in the session for a wiring loom problem.
Following their wild crash on Friday, both Colton Herta and Rinus Veekay were back on track, Veekay ending up 14th in his backup Jumbo Chevy for ECR.
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Will Power, who crashed when his left front wheel came off, also got in more than 80 laps Saturday but was only 20th fastest.
UP NEXT: Tonight's race is on NBCSN starting at 8:30 p.m. EDT.
Robin Miller
Robin Miller flunked out of Ball State after two quarters, but got a job stooging for Jim Hurtubise at the 1968 Indianapolis 500 when Herk's was the last roadster to ever make the race. He got hired at The Indianapolis Star a month later and talked his way into the sports department, where he began covering USAC and IndyCar racing. He got fired at The Star for being anti-Tony George, but ESPN hired him to write and do RPM2Nite. Then he went to SPEED and worked on WIND TUNNEL and SPEED REPORT. He started at RACER when SPEED folded, and went on to write for RACER.com and RACER magazine while also working for NBCSN on IndyCar telecasts.
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