Phillip Abbott/Lumen
Rahal leads damp IndyCar warm-up at Mid-Ohio
Rahal Letterman Lanigan’s Graham Rahal topped the speed charts in damp but drying warm-up for this afternoon’s Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio, while Conor Daly got his first laps as Simon Pagenaud’s sub at Meyer Shank Racing.
The only incident of note came while the track was drying but treacherous off-line. Defending IndyCar champion Will Power found a damp patch entering Turn 4, and fishtailed into the runoff, and thus needed a red flag in order to be rescued.
As the session rolled on, the times dropped toward "fully dry" times, David Malukas of Dale Coyne Racing w/HMD-Honda lapping the 13-turn 2.258-mile course in 1m08.6385s, half a second quicker than Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren-Chevrolet.
With three minutes to go, pole winner Colton Herta jumped into second place, but was then displaced by Scott Dixon of Chip Ganassi Racing. Then Graham Rahal, front-row starter, delivered a 1m08.4255s to land top spot, as Dixon furher improved to displace Malukas.
Devlin DeFrancesco made a late improvement to go fourth fastest ahead of Marcus Ericsson of Ganassi.
Behind Herta, Alexander Rossi was marginally the fastest Arrow McLaren driver ahead of O’Ward, who will have to climb from the very back of the grid after his qualifying faux pas.
He will be joined there by Daly, subbing for Pagenaud as the Frenchman follows IndyCar’s medical protocol after his huge shunt in Saturday practice. The Noblesville, Ind., native did a great job in his first 14 laps in a Meyer Shank Racing-Honda, clocking 12th-fastest lap, just a few hundredths behind teammate Helio Castroneves.
David Malsher-Lopez
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