Long Beach IndyCar: Herta leads Dixon in warm-up

Herta’s Andretti Autosport-Honda lapped the 1.968-mile course in 68.4762sec on his 14^th of 19 laps, and despite a wall-scrape, finished up ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda’s Scott Dixon who will start from the front row.

Simon Pagenaud was a further 0.15sec adrift in the quickest of the Team Penske-Chevrolets, with Ryan Hunter-Reay and Alexander Rossi fourth and fifth ahead of the former’s final race with Andretti Autosport.

Championship contestants Alex Palou and Pato O’Ward were ninth and 12^th respectively, while pole-winner Josef Newgarden – another driver to scrape the wall – was 13^th.

Meyer Shank Racing’s Helio Castroneves, who will roll off third this afternoon, was furious to turn only four laps, following an incident with semi-teammate Rossi. Castroneves was starting a hot lap when Rossi pulled out of the pits on cold tires, and thought his fellow Indy 500 winner was pulling out of the way for him and started trying to pull alongside him on the run to the Fountain Turn.

Instead, Rossi adopted the usual racing line through the gentle ‘S’, the MSR car ran into the Andretti car and into the wall on the left side before sliding into the raised curbing around the fountain. Castroneves fumed at the unnecessary impact, Rossi thought it was “hilarious” that Helio put the blame on him.

Jimmie Johnson was an impressive 15^th, just 1.17sec off Herta’s pace.

The race begins at 12.45pm local (Pacific) time.

P	Name	FTime	Diff	Gap	FL	Laps	FSpeed	Engine	Team
1	Colton Herta	1:08.4762	1:08.4762	0.000	14	19	103.464	Honda	Andretti Autosport
2	Scott Dixon	1:08.6507	0.1745	0.1745	18	22	103.201	Honda	Chip Ganassi Racing
3	Simon Pagenaud	1:08.8029	0.3267	0.1522	19	22	102.972	Chevy	Team Penske
4	Ryan Hunter-Reay	1:08.8612	0.3850	0.0583	14	20	102.885	Honda	Andretti Autosport
5	Alexander Rossi	1:09.2465	0.7703	0.3853	8	18	102.313	Honda	Andretti Autosport
6	Will Power	1:09.2799	0.8037	0.0334	20	22	102.263	Chevy	Team Penske
7	Jack Harvey	1:09.2838	0.8076	0.0039	15	16	102.258	Honda	Meyer Shank Racing
8	Graham Rahal	1:09.3318	0.8556	0.0480	15	18	102.187	Honda	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
9	Alex Palou	1:09.3364	0.8602	0.0046	9	20	102.180	Honda	Chip Ganassi Racing
10	Romain Grosjean	1:09.3802	0.9040	0.0438	21	21	102.116	Honda	Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR
11	James Hinchcliffe	1:09.4724	0.9962	0.0922	15	18	101.980	Honda	Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport
12	Pato O'Ward	1:09.4789	1.0027	0.0065	8	23	101.971	Chevy	Arrow McLaren SP
13	Josef Newgarden	1:09.5583	1.0821	0.0794	7	23	101.854	Chevy	Team Penske
14	Scott McLaughlin	1:09.5869	1.1107	0.0286	21	22	101.812	Chevy	Team Penske
15	Jimmie Johnson	1:09.6539	1.1777	0.0670	16	21	101.714	Honda	Chip Ganassi Racing
16	Ed Jones	1:09.7260	1.2498	0.0721	16	17	101.609	Honda	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan
17	Takuma Sato	1:09.7787	1.3025	0.0527	17	19	101.532	Honda	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
18	Max Chilton	1:09.7835	1.3073	0.0048	9	21	101.525	Chevy	Carlin
19	Felix Rosenqvist	1:09.7866	1.3104	0.0031	9	18	101.521	Chevy	Arrow McLaren SP
20	Marcus Ericsson	1:09.8017	1.3255	0.0151	12	19	101.499	Honda	Chip Ganassi Racing
21	Sebastien Bourdais	1:09.8080	1.3318	0.0063	14	20	101.490	Chevy	AJ Foyt Enterprises
22	Callum Ilott	1:09.9430	1.4668	0.1350	21	22	101.294	Chevy	Juncos Hollinger Racing
23	Rinus VeeKay	1:09.9459	1.4697	0.0029	18	19	101.290	Chevy	Ed Carpenter Racing
24	Charlie Kimball	1:09.9757	1.4995	0.0298	16	18	101.247	Chevy	AJ Foyt Enterprises
25	Oliver Askew	1:10.0134	1.5372	0.0377	11	17	101.192	Honda	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
26	Conor Daly	1:10.3288	1.8526	0.3154	19	19	100.738	Chevy	Ed Carpenter Racing
27	Dalton Kellett	1:10.5556	2.0794	0.2268	20	22	100.414	Chevy	AJ Foyt Enterprises
28	Helio Castroneves	1:12.2333	3.7571	1.6777	4	4	98.082	Honda	Meyer Shank Racing