IndyCar tweaks road/street practice format ahead of Barber

The IndyCar Series will make another change to the structure of its opening road and street course practice sessions with an alteration to Friday’s afternoon outing at Barber Motorsports Park.

The change has been made to try and inspire more running during the two-part session, which has previously been marked by teams spending a decent amount of time sitting idle on pit lane to conserve sets of tires for use in the second practice session, qualifying, and the race.

Under the new format, the previous 45-minute opening phase of the first session will be trimmed to 40 minutes. In the second phase, when the 27-car field was previously split into two 10-minute groups to allow for less congestion while drivers perform qualifying simulations on Firestone’s faster alternate tires, the 10-minutes per segment has been extended to 12 minutes apiece.

The change was communicated during a meeting between the series and team managers on Tuesday. One additional item that was expected to be addressed and decided upon, but wasn’t raised by the series, involved tire usage at the upcoming Indianapolis Grand Prix on May 10.

RACER understands a proposal floated by the series in recent months to require drivers to complete a minimum of two laps on Firestone’s primary tires and alternate tires, on two separate occasions — a doubling of the current requirement — was met with limited enthusiasm when it was originally broached during pre-season discussions.

It’s unclear whether the idea will return for consideration at the Indy GP.