Palou tops stop/start second day of Indy 500 practice

It was a stop and start and stop again kind of day for the second day of Indianapolis 500 practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and between the brief bouts of rain in the afternoon, the fastest lap was produced by Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou, moving Will Power’s Tuesday benchmark of 227.026mph to 227.546mph on Wednesday in the No. 10 Honda.

Team Penske’s Power led most of the abbreviated day with a 225.584mph tour in the No. 12 Chevy, and teammate Josef Newgarden was at a nearly identical 225.545mph. The pair appeared to have first and second to themselves until Palou cleared them by almost two miles per hour.

“I did mostly pack running in traffic,” Palou told RACER. “I did a little bit alone, but just to check some stuff.”

Ganassi’s Scott Dixon was fourth (225.092mph), a surging Conor Daly climbed to fifth (224.931mph) and David Malukas held sixth (224.618mph) after setting the speed on his sixth of just 21 laps. Most of the 2555 combined laps on Wednesday were turned while the cars were in higher-downforce race mode, but a number of drivers added lower-downforce qualifying simulation runs to get early indications of how their cars handled ahead of a busy Thursday, when qualifying sims are expected to be a more meaningful part of the test list for teams that are confident in their race setups.

Of those who weren’t happy on Wednesday, Pato O’Ward (20th) and Santino Ferrucci (33rd) were the most vocal. They will likely open tomorrow’s practice with a continued focus on finding race-day setups that bring more stability and speed.

Hard rain fell throughout the morning as teams prepared to practice, but the showers stopped early enough to only delay the noon start by an hour. With a mix of clouds set among the blue sky, drivers ventured out at 1pm ET and split their activities, with Andretti Global’s Kyle Kirkwood going straight into a qualifying simulation while others went directly into pack running to replicate what they’ll experience in the race.

Dixon was the first to post a quick lap with a 224.742mph in the No. 9 Honda, and AJ Foyt Racing’s Malukas followed in second with a 226.618mph in the No. 4 Chevy, both using tows to set their speeds. The best early no-tow lap belonged to Andretti’s Colton Herta with a 220.995mph in the No. 26 Honda.

At 2pm, the start of the second hour of running featured a change at the top with Power jumping to first with a 225.584mph in the No. 12 Team Penske Chevy, using a healthy tow to eclipse Dixon and Malukas at approximately 1:55pm, and behind them, Palou was fourth with a 224.102mph. Herta was fifth with a 224.099mph and Penske’s Scott McLaughlin was sixth in the No. 3 Chevy at 223.545mph. The no-tow leader also changed, with Kirkwood pushing the best qualifying simulation lap up to 222.760mph in the No. 27 Andretti Honda.

With eight cars running in a pack at 2:45pm, one of those drivers — Newgarden — improved to second overall with a lap of 225.545mph in the No. 2 Chevy and more shuffling happened as Marcus Armstrong threw the No. 66 Meyer Shank Racing Honda into fifth with a 224.409mph and Jack Harvey took sixth with a 224.361mph in the No. 24 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports Chevy to move Palou back to seventh and Herta to eighth.

The top six of Power, Newgarden, Dixon, Malukas, Armstrong, and Harvey held at the end of the second hour, and with thunderstorms a looming possibility as the afternoon moved into 3pm, a wave of cars back in Gasoline Alley undergoing setup changes were being readied to run before the potential stop to practice.

Palou was the only mover of interest among the leaders as he improved to fourth with a 224.922mph lap while navigating in a pack. Andretti Global dispatched all four cars to run in a pack of their own, led by Herta and Kirkwood who traded leading, and not far behind them, Marcus Ericsson was involved, but the fourth member of the trio, Marco Andretti, was quite a distance behind over the handful of laps they turned.

As 4pm neared, the track was relatively unused, apart from Meyer Shank Racing’s Helio Castroneves and a couple of Arrow McLaren drivers, with the latter including Christian Lundgaard firing out to try a qualifying sim run on new tires. Rain ended the running as pit lane emptied, but by 4:45pm, teams were given the all-clear from IndyCar to return and resume practice until 6pm.

Daly was the first mover as action got under way, taking fourth — splitting Dixon and Palou —with a 224.931mph lap

Crossing into 5pm and ‘Happy Hour’, when temperatures cool and the cars run faster, Palou was the first to strike with a 227.546mph to lay claim to the top speed as he shared a tow with a group including Power and about five others. Sprinkles stopped the session at 5:16pm, and just 15 minutes were needed to go green for the final time at 5:31 where a massive train of cars circulated, but no notable changes at the front were recorded.

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