Lundgaard leads Palou in sunny Friday practice in Portland

Temperatures were rising on Friday at Portland International Raceway as the lone IndyCar Series practice session was run under blue skies and 80 Fahrenheit conditions as Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou were separated by a scant 0.0061s by the time the clock ran out.

Lundgaard was the faster of the two with a 58.532s lap turned in the No. 7 Chevy during the first split-group run while using Firestone’s fastest alternate tire compound. Palou pushed the No. 10 Honda to a 58.538s lap to top the second group, and once the afternoon was complete, the top six had the Dane and the Spaniard followed by Meyer Shank Racing’s Felix Rosenqvist in third (58.659s), Graham Rahal a spirited fourth for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (58.688s), Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in fifth (58.713s) and David Malukas (58.750s) representing AJ Foyt Racing.

Elsewhere, Palou’s lone championship rival Pato O’Ward was a dissatisfied ninth (58.798s) with Arrow McLaren, Colton Herta was a solid 13th after losing almost all of the main session (58.887s) in his Andretti Global car, and Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, a race winner at Portland in 2022, was searching for speed in 19th (59.130s).

The 45-minute all-cars opening to practice had a familiar look with installation laps being turned, plenty of sitting and letting time expire while preserving sets of tires, and rookies making use of an extra set of tires to learn the track and serve up some action for fans in attendance.

A red flag was needed approximately halfway through the 45-minute run when Scott Dixon went off and needed help extricating himself from Turn 12. Once the session returned to green, Christian Lundgaard (59.220s) was fastest ahead of teammate O’Ward, Kyle Kirkwood, Rinus VeeKay, Louis Foster and Conor Daly.

With seven minutes to go, fast times were being produced as Felix Rosenqvist went to P2 and Palou shot from P21 to P3. Palou’s next lap was good for P1 with a 59.206s lap. Newgarden went to P4 and Armstrong took P6.

Lundgaard retook P1 at the 5m mark with a 59.104s lap to lead a top six that had Palou, Armstrong in P3, Rosenqvist, Newgarden and O’Ward in place, which held until the checkered flag.

Herta did get out with three minutes to go and was able to improve from P27 to P8 with a flying lap to close the outing.

Once the field was split for a pair of 12-minute sessions to reduce on-track congestion as teams bolted on the faster red-banded Firestone alternate tires to perform qualifying simulations, it was Lundgaard who claimed P1 with a 58.532s lap ahead of Daly and Kyffin Simpson with 5m to go.

It ended with Lundgaard on top followed by Rosenqvist, Rahal, Newgarden, Dixon and Daly.

The second session was led by Palou at 58.538s ahead of Malukas, Armstrong, Kirkwood, O’Ward and Foster.

UP NEXT: Practice two, Saturday, 12 p.m. ET

RESULTS