Montoya heads Penske 1-2 in first practice at Long Beach

Although AJ Foyt Racing-Honda’s Takuma Sato, who won here in 2013, was first driver into the 68sec bracket, clocking a 68.7097sec (103.112mph) lap on his fifth lap, he relinquished top spot to Team Penske-Chevrolet’s Juan Pablo Montoya by over 0.4sec.

Following a red flag due to a crash for rookie Alexander Rossi, Montoya clipped his time further on his 13^th lap, getting down to 68.1290sec, mere thousandths off a 104mph lap.

In the dying moments of the session, Montoya’s teammate Will Power got within a quarter-second of the Colombian when the red came out for a second time.

This time it was due to Charlie Kimball in a run-off area with the front brakes alight on his #83 Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevrolet.

Speaking of brake problems, Jack Hawksworth put the second Foyt car into P3 despite early in the session spinning as a result of boiling brake fluid.

Fourth place went to Josef Newgarden’s Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet, while Sato clung on to fifth.

James Hinchcliffe (Schmidt Peterson Motorsports), and Andretti Autosport pairing Ryan Hunter Reay and Carlos Munoz ensured a total of five Hondas in the top 10.

Defending polesitter Helio Castroneves (Penske) and defending winner Scott Dixon (Ganassi-Chevrolet) were eighth and 10^th respectively.

Rossi went into the tires at Turn 8 on his ninth lap with 15mins remaining in the session. The incident came not long after he had replaced a cut left-front tire with a fresh one on his Andretti Autosport-Honda and the Californian admitted that the resulting balance alteration had simply caught him out.

That brought out the red flag for some eight minutes, prompting IndyCar to add five minutes to the session, and left Dale Coyne Racing’s Conor Daly as top rookie in 17th.

Practice 1 results

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time
1	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	1:08.1290
2	12	Will Power	Penske (C)	+0.2424
3	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	+0.3549
4	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	+0.4760
5	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	+0.5807
6	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	+0.6275
7	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	+0.6324
8	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	+0.7694
9	26	Carlos Munoz	Andretti (H)	+0.7790
10	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	+0.8221
11	11	Sebastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	+0.8331
12	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	+0.8535
13	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	+0.9276
14	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	+1.0749
15	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	+1.0900
16	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	+1.1040
17	18	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	+1.2343
18	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	+1.2842
19	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	+1.4446
20	19	Luca Filippi	Coyne (H)	+1.5573
21	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti-Herta (H)	+1.8931