Portland IndyCar: Bourdais leads opening practice

The Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan Honda driver set a best time of 57.398, equating to an average of 123.183mph to head championship leader Scott Dixon in the Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda by a mere 0.0246sec.

Dixon, who suffered a harmless Turn 2 spin, was forced to skip the last five minutes of the 45min practice session as punishment for twice taking the checkered flag in yesterday’s open test. However, he didn’t miss much at all, because the final five minutes were ruined by two red flags, caused by Zach Veach (Andretti Autosport) and Alfonso Celis Jr. (Juncos Racing) getting the Turn 10/11 complex wrong and needing rescuing.

Thus the final times are somewhat inconclusive, but Josef Newgarden was lead Team Penske-Chevrolet driver on a 57.584, around two-tenths ahead of teammate Will Power, and separated by Marco Andretti who, as yesterday, was the fastest of the Andretti Autosport machines.

Jordan King looked stronger than he’s looked since the first quarter of the season, putting Ed Carpenter Racing into sixth, 0.39 off the top, and ahead of Alexander Rossi who is trying to erase Dixon’s 26 point lead over him in the points standings.

Takuma Sato was the faster of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Hondas in eighth with Ed Jones making it two Ganassi cars in the top 10 and Veach completing it.

Jack Harvey, in Michael Shank Racing’s first race since Mid-Ohio, slotted into 11^th, and Santino Ferrucci also performed commendably on only his second weekend of IndyCar racing, putting his Dale Coyne Racing-Honda in 12^th. Teammate Pietro Fittipaldi did not turn any laps due to a major brake issue.

Carlos Munoz, subbing for Robert Wickens this weekend, was only 22^nd, despite being only 0.25sec off Schmidt Peterson Motorsports teammate James Hinchcliffe. The top 21 cars were covered by 1 second.

Cla	#	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	18	Sébastien Bourdais	16	57.3975			123.183
2	9	Scott Dixon	13	57.4221	0.0246	0.0246	123.130
3	1	Josef Newgarden	16	57.5836	0.1861	0.1615	122.785
4	98	Marco Andretti	18	57.7114	0.3139	0.1278	122.513
5	12	Will Power	17	57.7663	0.3688	0.0549	122.397
6	20	Jordan King	18	57.7873	0.3898	0.0210	122.352
7	27	Alexander Rossi	21	57.7892	0.3917	0.0019	122.348
8	30	Takuma Sato	18	57.7915	0.3940	0.0023	122.343
9	10	Ed Jones	17	57.8816	0.4841	0.0901	122.153
10	26	Zach Veach	16	57.9762	0.5787	0.0946	121.953
11	60	Jack Harvey	19	57.9806	0.5831	0.0044	121.944
12	39	Santino Ferrucci	20	57.9969	0.5994	0.0163	121.910
13	59	Max Chilton	20	58.0464	0.6489	0.0495	121.806
14	22	Simon Pagenaud	20	58.0672	0.6697	0.0208	121.762
15	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	16	58.0898	0.6923	0.0226	121.715
16	15	Graham Rahal	18	58.1059	0.7084	0.0161	121.681
17	88	Gabby Chaves	21	58.1265	0.7290	0.0206	121.638
18	5	James Hinchcliffe	18	58.2281	0.8306	0.1016	121.426
19	21	Spencer Pigot	18	58.2855	0.8880	0.0574	121.306
20	4	Matheus Leist	28	58.3772	0.9797	0.0917	121.116
21	23	Charlie Kimball	17	58.3897	0.9922	0.0125	121.090
22	6	Carlos Munoz	17	58.4954	1.0979	0.1057	120.871
23	14	Tony Kanaan	19	58.5197	1.1222	0.0243	120.821
24	32	Alfonso Celis Jr.	20	58.9654	1.5679	0.4457	119.908
25	19	Pietro Fittipaldi		0.0000