Ryan Hunter-Reay put Andretti Autosport-Honda at the top of the times in second practice for Sunday’s Honda Indy 200 as all the teams tried the ‘red’ soft-compound Firestones for the first time this weekend.
Hunter-Reay’s 65.1950 was impressively only one second off Will Power’s pole time from last year with the high-downforce manufacturer aerokits.
It was also good enough to beat Power into second place in this session, by 0.1421sec. The Penske-Chevrolet driver had a wild off-course excursion at Turn 4 as he came to the end of his run on the primary compound tires, but the car was unharmed and on reds he swiftly bounced to the top of the times, only to be deposed by RHR.
Local hero and 2015 winner Graham Rahal was third, a mere 0.077sec behind Power and only 0.0171 in front of Spencer Pigot, who is again impressing for Ed Carpenter Racing.
Alexander Rossi and Marco Andretti made it three Andretti cars in the Top 10, but the fourth car was less fortunate. Zach Veach had an early spin at Turn 5, and although he kept the engine running, the Andretti Autosport-Honda couldn’t make it over the crest in the grass and beached itself. On reds, however, the Ohioan bounced back with 12th to end the session as top rookie.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon and Ed Jones were seventh and eighth, while Josef Newgarden was another Penske driver who spun off the track without making contact with anything other than curbing and grass. He finished the session in ninth.
Arguably the most impressive performance came from Jack Harvey, who finished 10th. The part-timer in the Meyer Shank Racing entry wound up ahead of his Schmidt Peterson Motorsports teammates.
Pietro Fittipaldi’s rehabilitation appears to be near complete. He finished the session 18th, but was only 0.4sec behind this morning’s pacesetter, his Dale Coyne Racing teammate Sebastien Bourdais.
Charlie Kimball was parked for the final 15mins of the session for not slowing enough under yellow and creating avoidable contact in the morning session when he struck the rear of Tony Kanaan’s AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet.
Third practice starts at 10am local (Eastern) time Saturday.
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