The preparation for Indianapolis 500 miles starts this week with the dispute of two days of testing on the oval, in which the 32 drivers officially confirmed to date begin to fine-tune their vehicles four weeks before the start of official training. The day ended led by Scott Dixon in one of Ganassi’s cars, but the filming of the day, however, was significantly reduced compared to the original plans due to the interference of the liquid element and, above all, due to a recurrent problem at the exit of the pits that led to three very compromising incidents.
As soon as the cars left the pit lane for the first session of the day, between turns 1 and 2, Alexander Rossi suddenly lost control of the carwithout hitting anything. An incident that went relatively unnoticed until the final hours of the day. At 17:09 local time, with one hour and 21 minutes to go, Hélio Castroneves suddenly lost control of his car on pit road as he approached the inside of turn 2, crossing the track and hitting the front end of the Wall. 20 minutes later, there was a more sticky incident when Will Power suffered a similar spinin his case through the inside of turn 1 and without crossing the track.
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Leading the train of cars that was approaching the bend down the track, Colton Herta had to dodge the apex to avoid hitting Power and oversteered until lightly touching the wall with the right rear tire. His car went all the way across the track, and Marcus Ericsson came close to colliding with Herta in his evasive maneuver off the track, narrowly missing him. Despite the fact that there was an hour left on the clock, the session would not resume again. The concern of the pilots and teams due to the suddenness of the loss of control and the dangerous situation after Power’s spin meant that no one wanted to risk it until they found the exact causes, and the session was officially over with 28 minutes remaining.
According to the first inquiries, the problems were not caused by the tires, by the low temperatures of a cold and cloudy day, or by possible humidity after the rains that had forced the start of the activity to be delayed an hour and a half until 12:00: 30 locations. Although a specific cause has not yet been determined, everything points to the reason being an asphalt joint compound that was applied over the winter on pit roadwith the aim of reducing the drying time of this area on rainy days.
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These three incidents ended up monopolizing a day’s conversation that was otherwise it was very fast thanks to stable conditions and relatively low temperatures. With just half an hour of green flag in the only session open to the 32 competitors, Scott Dixon posted the best time of the day with an average of 227.187 miles per hour with slipstream. The New Zealander had also been the fastest in the first two-hour session, reserved for drivers with oval experience outside of Indianapolis in 2021, with a best lap of 225.622 mph that only three other drivers would manage to beat at the end, all of them with Chevy engine.
conor daly led the drivers with engines of the American brand in Carpenter’s second car, ahead of a callum ilott who was by far the fastest of the seven rookies. The British driver from Juncos had already recorded a best time of 222 mph in the rookie session in which he passed his ‘rookie test’, and raised the bar to the 226.308mph. The comparison with the rest of the rookies has an asterisk; only three of the other six managed to adapt their car in time to take part in the final session. But his record was more than 2 mph higher than the next noviceCanadian Devlin DeFrancesco, with the 12th fastest time in one of Andretti’s reliable cars.
Santino Ferrrucci surprised in his formal debut with Dreyer & Reinbold always hovering around the front positions, exhibiting his usual oval good work to be third in the morning behind Scott McLaughlin and fourth overall for the day. Ericsson set the fifth fastest time over Rossi and a Castroneves who will not participate tomorrow of the second day of tests; Meyer Shank Racing wants to take the necessary calm to repair his machine to have it ready in May, especially since it is the machine with which the Brazilian achieved his fourth victory in Indianapolis in 2021.
For its part, Álex Palou completed 42 laps and finished the day with the eleventh best average of 224.462 mph, after being seventh at the beginning of the day. You have to go down to positions 16 and 18 to locate Romain Grosjean and Jimmie Johnson, who still had to pass their last phase of the ‘rookie test’, but who were allowed to shoot in the veterans’ session as that last one was not there phase subject to a speed limitation.
RESULTS OF THE FIRST INDIANAPOLIS 500 TEST
This Thursday, if the weather is good and the problems when leaving the pits are reduced, they will have six more hours (from 16:00 to 22:00 local timefree and a la carte in IndyCar Live!) to keep finding your limits and those of your machines.