Daly leads the way on first day of IMS Open Test

Conor Daly shot to the top of the speed chart in the final minutes of Tuesday’s Indy Open Test. The Dreyer & Reinbold Racing driver produced a best lap of 225.394mph in the No. 23 Chevy, which eclipsed a quartet of Indianapolis 500 winners in Meyer Shank Racing’s Helio Castroneves (225.200mph), Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato (224.800mph), Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon (224.564mph), and ECR’s Alexander Rossi (224.367mph).

Dale Coyne Racing’s Romain Grosjean, who lost time in the morning session after suffering a bird strike that required a considerable amount of cleaning inside the cockpit – after small bits made it through the air vent at the base of the aeroscreen – and the front of the No. 18 Honda, was sixth (224.307mph).

“Good to get back in the swing of things here,” Daly said. “The team did a great job of preparing all winter for this day. It’s only Day 1 for us, but it was obviously a good day. Thankful to be working with Chevrolet again and also everyone at ARCO and Kingspan. It’s only Day 1, onto Day 2.”

Adversity was kept to a minimum on Tuesday. Other than breaks for track inspections and when overnight rains began seeping through weepers in Turn 2, the only racing-related stoppage came in the final 30 minutes of running when ECR’s Christian Rasmussen pulled off and stopped while exiting the pits with a suspected rear wheel issue and had the car removed by a tow truck.

Of the 33 drivers present, 32 were active through the end of the day. The exception was Katherine Legge, who encountered technical issues that prevented her from turning more than two installation laps. She’ll return to action and look to complete her refresher test on Wednesday.

RESULTS
RESULTS (NO TOW)
RESULTS (COMBINED)
RESULTS (COMBINED, NO TOW)