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Practice report

Long Beach IndyCar: Rossi leads in FP2, Sato crashes

Alexander Rossi led an Andretti Autosport 1-2 on Friday with teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay clocking second fastest, but Takuma Sato brought the session to a slightly early close with a shunt exiting Turn 1.

Alexander Rossi, Andretti Autosport Honda

Alexander Rossi, Andretti Autosport Honda

Perry Nelson / Motorsport Images

The reigning Indy 500 winner and 2013 Long Beach winner lost the rear of his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda as he hit the apex of the left-hander, and ran out of room to gather it up. The right-rear smacked hard against the concrete wall, just beyond where the tire wall halts. He appeared unhurt.

To that point, Sato was fourth fastest, behind the Andretti cars and Josef Newgarden of Team Penske-Chevrolet who was forced to miss the last 10 minutes of the session for being tardy in attending the post practice weigh-in after this morning’s practice session.

Nevertheless, he was fastest Chevy runner and one of only three drivers – the others being Rossi and rookie Kyle Kaiser – who set a faster time in FP2 (using the alternate-compound red sidewalled tires) than in FP1. Hunter-Reay admitted this left a "major question mark for everyone."

This morning’s pacesetter Scott Dixon was more than half a second slower than Rossi’s 1min08.557sec but fast enough to demote Will Power (Penske) to sixth.

Defending Long Beach winner James Hinchcliffe (Schmidt Peterson) was seventh ahead of the second RLLR car of Graham Rahal, St. Petersburg winner Sebastien Bourdais (Dale Coyne Racing) and the third Penske of Simon Pagenaud.

Rookie Zach Veach wound up 0.12sec quicker than one of his teammates, Marco Andretti, while the returning Jack Harvey was a similar distance behind SPM teammate and fellow-rookie Robert Wickens.

IndyCar Long Beach, practice 2

ClaDriverLapsTimeGapIntervalMph
1 27 united_states  Alexander Rossi  16 1'08.5567     103.342
2 28 united_states  Ryan Hunter-Reay  15 1'08.7083 0.1516 0.1516 103.114
3 1 united_states  Josef Newgarden  15 1'08.9307 0.3740 0.2224 102.781
4 30 japan  Takuma Sato  17 1'09.0544 0.4977 0.1237 102.597
5 9 new_zealand  Scott Dixon  19 1'09.1049 0.5482 0.0505 102.522
6 12 australia  Will Power  22 1'09.1953 0.6386 0.0904 102.388
7 5 canada  James Hinchcliffe  17 1'09.2687 0.7120 0.0734 102.280
8 15 united_states  Graham Rahal  22 1'09.2728 0.7161 0.0041 102.274
9 18 france  Sébastien Bourdais  17 1'09.3552 0.7985 0.0824 102.152
10 22 france  Simon Pagenaud  24 1'09.3687 0.8120 0.0135 102.133
11 21 united_states  Spencer Pigot  10 1'09.4608 0.9041 0.0921 101.997
12 14 brazil  Tony Kanaan  16 1'09.5770 1.0203 0.1162 101.827
13 26 united_states  Zach Veach  16 1'09.6902 1.1335 0.1132 101.661
14 6 canada  Robert Wickens  18 1'09.7242 1.1675 0.0340 101.612
15 98 united_states  Marco Andretti  17 1'09.8166 1.2599 0.0924 101.477
16 60 united_kingdom  Jack Harvey  13 1'09.8433 1.2866 0.0267 101.439
17 59 united_kingdom  Max Chilton  19 1'09.8444 1.2877 0.0011 101.437
18 20 united_kingdom  Jordan King  14 1'09.9069 1.3502 0.0625 101.346
19 10 united_arab_emirates  Ed Jones  20 1'10.0616 1.5049 0.1547 101.122
20 23 united_states  Charlie Kimball  21 1'10.1694 1.6127 0.1078 100.967
21 32 united_states  Kyle Kaiser  20 1'10.3206 1.7639 0.1512 100.750
22 4 brazil  Matheus Leist  18 1'10.5076 1.9509 0.1870 100.483
23 19 canada  Zachary Claman De Melo  17 1'10.5442 1.9875 0.0366 100.431
24 88 colombia  Gabby Chaves  12 1'10.8269 2.2702 0.2827 100.030

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