Herta fastest in eight-car Indy road course test

The Andretti Autosport-Honda ace, who last month won the wet GMR Grand Prix of Indianapolis from 16^th on the grid, lapped the 2.439-mile course in 70.5574sec, an average speed of 124.443mph which is around 0.1sec slower than fastest time in the first practice for the Grand Prix.

However, the relevance of these times is somewhat under question. The drivers’ fastest laps came on sets of tires devised for Barber Motorsports Park, and the tires that will be used in the second Indy road course race of the season, to be held on July 29-30, were slightly slower.

Alexander Rossi, who will be departing Andretti Autosport for Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet at the end of this season, was second fastest, 0.19sec slower than Herta but fractionally ahead of his next team’s drivers, Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist. However, after lunch and running the ‘slower’ tires on a hot track, Rossi moved up to the top of the charts ahead of Rosenqvist, Herta and O’Ward.

Romain Grosjean and Devlin De Francesco were 0.58 and 0.84sec off their pacesetting teammate, but ahead of their future teammate, Kyle Kirkwood, currently in the AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet. In the afternoon session, Kirkwood was able to move ahead of this pair, as he very nearly replicated the time he had set on the slightly faster tires in the morning session.

Paretta Autosport’s Simona De Silvestro, who made her road course IndyCar comeback two weeks ago at Road America, has made big strides at getting back into the swing of racing an open-wheel car, even taking into account the fact that she was on a much shorter track today. Her best lap was within 1.3sec of Herta’s top time, while in the afternoon session on the more relevant tires, she was 1.5sec off top spot.

IndyCar’s next race, the ninth round of the 2022 season, will be in 10 days at Mid-Ohio Sports Car course.

Overall fastest times

Afternoon times