Hunter-Reay stays top, Newgarden fastest without a tow

Ryan Hunter-Reay’s time from this morning easily held as quickest, he and teammate Carlos Munoz the only drivers to breach the 228mph threshold. In the final two hours Will Power jumped to third fastest for Team Penske with a 227.733mph lap as Josef Newgarden grabbed P4 for Ed Carpenter Racing and pushed Gabby Chaves’ Dale Coyne Racing-Honda down to fifth.

Charlie Kimball was the fastest of the Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevys, while Townsend Bell (Andretti) improved to seventh ahead of Sage Karam (Dreyer & Reinbold/Kingdom Racing), Marco Andretti (Andretti) and Graham Rahal (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda).

The only incident of note in the final two hours of the day was what appeared to be an engine issue for Mikhail Aleshin’s Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda, which ground to a halt after 72 laps.

Only 67 of those were driven by Aleshin, as the Russian had an altered weight distribution, and SPM teammate James Hinchcliffe wished to try it out before it was transferred to his car. The Canadian completed 81 laps in his own car and five in Aleshin’s.

Buddy Lazier cracked the 220mph barrier when he emerged late in the session, completing 36 laps overall today..

Brabham completed the most laps of the session, turning 126 of the 33-car field’s grand total of 2779.

Without the aid of tow, Newgarden topped the list on 224.541mph, followed by the five Andretti Autosport cars, Chaves and ECR team owner and teammate Ed Carpenter.

Team Penske-Chevrolet, by contrast, were only 18^th, 22^nd, 23^rd and 31^st, the last of these being Helio Castroneves, who didn’t break into the 220s.

Wednesday practice after 2 hours
Wednesday practice after 4 hours