Ericsson on top in opening IndyCar practice at Barber
Marcus Ericsson opened this weekend's IndyCar Series round at Barber Motorsports Park by topping Friday's first practice session with a fastest lap of 1m07.7470s.
IndyCar trialed a revised session schedule at Barber, taking five minutes from the full-field running — a drop from 45 to 40 minutes — while increasing the time in the two split groups that close the session by two minutes, giving the halves 12 minutes of decreased traffic apiece to perform their qualifying simulations on Firestone’s faster red-banded alternate tires.
In the 40-minute phase, Andretti Global’s Ericsson was the pacesetter with the 1m07.7470s lap in the No. 28 Honda, as he opted against waiting for the split session and was among the first to bolt on the alternates and put down a lap that stood for the rest of the afternoon.
During the session, Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay lost a considerable amount of time while a brake issue was resolved, and at Arrow McLaren, Christian Lundgaard also sat idle for a good while as an oil leak found in the left rear was investigated before he was sent out to turn his first meaningful laps with the end of the session drawing near.
Ganassi’s Kyffin Simpson was also relegated to a timed visit to pit lane — 10 minutes of being parked — as a result of having his car’s fire extinguisher bottle turned off, which was discovered by the series over telemetry.
One the field was split, Andretti’s Colton Herta led the first group with a 1m07.7728s lap in the No. 26 Honda, and in the second group, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou topped the times with a 1m07.7602s generated by his No. 10 Honda.
After the trio of Hondas, it was a trio of Chevrolets as Team Penske’s Will Power (1m07.7869s) was fourth ahead of Ed Carpenter Racing’s Alexander Rossi (1m07.8098s) and Penske’s Josef Newgarden completed the top six (1m07.8667s), which was separated by a scant 0.1197s.
A few drivers had minor offs, but as a whole, the session was clean.
UP NEXT: Practice 2, 11:30am ET
Marshall Pruett
The 2026 season marks Marshall Pruett's 40th year working in the sport. In his role today for RACER, Pruett covers open-wheel and sports car racing as a writer, reporter, photographer, and filmmaker. In his previous career, he served as a mechanic, engineer, and team manager in a variety of series, including IndyCar, IMSA, and World Challenge.
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