Palou leads first Thermal practice with Andretti cars hot on his heels

Alex Palou ended Friday’s opening practice for The Thermal Club IndyCar Grand Prix with the fastest lap and all three Andretti Global drivers close behind.

Palou turned a 1m40.5486s lap in the No. 10 Honda and had Andretti’s Kyle Kirkwood in second with the No. 27 Honda (+0.0901s), Marcus Ericsson in the No. 28 Honda in third (+0.1884s), and Colton Herta closing the Honda-powered cluster (+0.2953s) in the No. 26 car.

Ed Carpenter Racing’s Christian Rasmussen was next, first of the Chevy-powered drivers, in fifth with the No. 21 car (+0.3242s) and Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward completed the top six with the No. 5 Chevy (+0.3606s).

The long and hot session run under blue skies saw teams complete installation laps, return to the pits, and sit for the next 10 minutes. Once the session got moving, the first red flag appeared as PREMA Racing’s Robert Schwartzman came to a stop with small flames licking out of the back of the No. 83 Chevy. A powertrain issue ended his day on the spot, and towards the end of the first split group session towards the close of the afternoon, another red was needed to clear Devlin DeFrancesco’s No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda.

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DeFrancesco appeared to stall in Turn 1, re-fired his car, but was unable to drive away. The No. 30 machine was eventually lifted and carried away on the back of a tow truck.

With just enough time left on the clock for the first group to go out and turn one more fast lap, Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist, who’d led the group, was pipped at the end by Herta. In the second group, Palou set his mark and it held until the checkered flag.

Tires -- the big topic of the event -- didn’t get as much attention as expected on Friday as the stop-start nature of the session, along with the paddock-wide effort to sit for long stretches and save tire sets for Saturday and Sunday, meant few drivers turned more than a handful of laps on the primary and alternate compounds.

Fastest times of the day, set in the split groups, were done on alternates, but speeds were not particularly notable after hard rains recently fell and washed all of the rubber from the 3.067-mile, 17-turn road course.