Portland IndyCar: Newgarden leads fragmented first practice

David Malukas of Dale Coyne Racing with HMD-Honda was the first driver to duck under the 1-minute barrier, with a 59.9263sec, and he was soon joined by Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet, who was just 0.0374sec slower.

Malukas’ fellow rookies took advantage of their extra set of Firestone primaries to hit the track early in the 75-minute session, and so his former Indy Lights title rival Kyle Kirkwood got within 0.0222sec.

Then Callum Ilott on his seventh lap ran a 59.6811sec to go fastest by almost quarter of a second in the Juncos Hollinger-Chevy at the track on which he made his IndyCar debut last year.

After 25mins, a red flag went out when one of the big screens facing the front straight and the suites above the pitlane suddenly fell askew. It would have taken a strange quirk of fate for it to fall onto the track, but it wasn’t worth taking the risk. Mercifully, IndyCar eventually stopped the clock so the 25 drivers weren’t penalized for a weird and elementary issue outside their control.

Some 1hr20mins later, action resumed and Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport-Honda and championship contender Marcus Ericsson of Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda – for this race in almost identical PNC Bank colors as teammate Scott Dixon – were quickly into the 59s.

Grosjean further improved to hit top spot with a 59.5997, an average speed of 118.631mph around the 1.964-mile road course in Portland, OR, but he was soon usurped by two of his teammates, Alexander Rossi and 2019 Portland polesitter Colton Herta.

Rossi then had a high-speed off at Turn 6 but managed to regain the track, but then 2019 Portland winner Takuma Sato went off at Turn 11 in the Dale Coyne Racing with HMD Motorsports, burying the front left of the car in the tire wall.

The session resumed with 28mins to go, enough time for Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet and Josef Newgarden to move into the top five – but five minutes later Helio Castroneves spun at Turn 2 – for the second time – and out came the red again.

Again action resumed, and Scott McLaughlin moved his Penske into fifth, but then O’Ward spun off at Turn 5, without touching a barrier but bringing out another red.

There were 11mins left when the green flew again, with most drivers hitting the track on the red sidewalled Firestone alternate compound. Ericsson went quickest with a 59.2860, but Newgarden went over half a second faster, with a 58.7574, then a scintillating 58.5769 – an average of 120.703mph.

McLaughlin looked set to be his closest challenger with a lap 0.1387sec slower than his teammate, but then Malukas split the Penske pair. The third Penske of championship leader Power was unable to hit the top three as he was held up by lapped traffic in both laps when his reds were at their peak, but his frustration was mild compared with Grosjean, who suffered transmission issues just before he was going to make a red-tire run.

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	18	58.5769		120.703
2	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing	34	58.7024	0.1255	120.445
3	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	23	58.7156	0.1387	120.418
4	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	20	58.7639	0.1870	120.319
5	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	18	58.8246	0.2477	120.195
6	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	18	58.8458	0.2689	120.151
7	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	28	58.9582	0.3813	119.922
8	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	23	58.9896	0.4127	119.858
9	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	23	58.9988	0.4219	119.840
10	Will Power	Team Penske	25	59.0287	0.4518	119.779
11	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	23	59.0325	0.4556	119.771
12	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	21	59.0656	0.4887	119.704
13	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	31	59.1067	0.5298	119.621
14	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	26	59.2422	0.6653	119.347
15	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	23	59.2730	0.6961	119.285
16	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	25	59.2860	0.7091	119.259
17	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	22	59.3141	0.7372	119.203
18	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	28	59.3386	0.7617	119.153
19	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	31	59.3561	0.7792	119.118
20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	26	59.4217	0.8448	118.987
21	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	17	59.5997	1.0228	118.631
22	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	12	59.6261	1.0492	118.579
23	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	30	1'00.0175	1.4406	117.806
24	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	33	1'00.2741	1.6972	117.304
25	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing	13	1'00.5316	1.9547	116.805
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