Practice report

Barber IndyCar: Rahal leads Rossi in warm-up

Graham Rahal, who will start his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda on the front row beside teammate Takuma Sato for this afternoon’s Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama, set fastest lap in raceday warm-up at Barber Motorsports Park.

The half-hour session allows drivers to try used alternate [softer] compound tires as well as primaries, but Rahal topped the times with a 70.175sec lap of the 2.3-mile course, an average speed of 117.991mph.

That was 0.1102sec faster than Alexander Rossi’s Andrettti Autosport-Honda, who was separated from his fourth fastest teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay by championship leader Josef Newgarden in the Team Penske-Chevrolet.

Zach Veach, who will be starting at the back, shook off his Barber blues – despite an off at Turn 15 that brought out the red flag – with fifth fastest time, as all the Andretti cars tried reds and discovered they hung on well over longer runs.

Jack Harvey claimed seventh with his 20^th and final lap in the Meyer Shank Racing SPM-Honda, with polesistter Sato in eighth, Matheus Leist giving a boost to AJ Foyt Racing with ninth and Simon Pagenaud completing the Top 10.

The race gets the green flag at 3.15pm local (Central) time.

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	20	1'10.1751			117.991
2	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	20	1'10.2853	0.1102	0.1102	117.806
3	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	20	1'10.5107	0.3356	0.2254	117.429
4	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	15	1'10.5596	0.3845	0.0489	117.348
5	26	Zach Veach	Andretti Autosport	15	1'10.7195	0.5444	0.1599	117.082
6	88	Colton Herta	Harding Racing	16	1'10.7525	0.5774	0.0330	117.028
7	60	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	20	1'10.7604	0.5853	0.0079	117.015
8	30	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	20	1'10.9002	0.7251	0.1398	116.784
9	4	Matheus Leist	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	16	1'10.9195	0.7444	0.0193	116.752
10	22	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	17	1'10.9258	0.7507	0.0063	116.742
11	98	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	15	1'10.9733	0.7982	0.0475	116.664
12	10	Felix Rosenqvist	Chip Ganassi Racing	20	1'10.9770	0.8019	0.0037	116.658
13	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	17	1'11.0764	0.9013	0.0994	116.494
14	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	20	1'11.3067	1.1316	0.2303	116.118
15	12	Will Power	Team Penske	18	1'11.3643	1.1892	0.0576	116.024
16	7	Marcus Ericsson	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	19	1'11.3672	1.1921	0.0029	116.020
17	31	Patricio O'Ward	Carlin	21	1'11.4576	1.2825	0.0904	115.873
18	18	Sébastien Bourdais	Dale Coyne Racing	20	1'11.4592	1.2841	0.0016	115.870
19	21	Spencer Pigot	Ed Carpenter Racing	19	1'11.4627	1.2876	0.0035	115.865
20	59	Max Chilton	Carlin	20	1'11.6123	1.4372	0.1496	115.623
21	81	Ben Hanley	DragonSpeed	16	1'11.6725	1.4974	0.0602	115.525
22	14	Tony Kanaan	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	12	1'11.7497	1.5746	0.0772	115.401
23	20	Ed Jones	Ed Carpenter Racing	18	1'11.8127	1.6376	0.0630	115.300
24	19	Santino Ferrucci	Dale Coyne Racing	18	1'12.2603	2.0852	0.4476	114.586