Practice report

IndyCar St. Pete: Herta leads Dixon in raceday warm-up

With his last lap of the session, Colton Herta edged championship aspirant Scott Dixon to lead IndyCar’s half-hour warm-up session ahead of this afternoon’s Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.

Herta, who will start third in his Andretti Harding Steinbrenner Autosport-Honda, set a time of 61.6011sec on his 22^nd and final tour of the 1.8-mile street/runway course to edge Dixon by 0.0243sec.

The Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda ace, survived a trip into the Turn 1 run-off zone, just after hitting top spot, and squeezed in 27 laps in the 30min session. He will roll off 11^th as he guns for his sixth IndyCar championship.

Ganassi’s form looked strong, with Felix Rosenqvist and Marcus Ericsson claiming third and 10^th in the other CGR-Hondas, while Alexander Rossi – starting from the front row this afternoon – nabbed fourth spot.

Fastest Chevrolet runner was two-time St. Petersburg winner Sebastien Bourdais of AJ Foyt Racing.

James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Hunter-Reay ensured three Andretti cars in the top 10, despite Hinchcliffe also making a trip into a runoff area, fortunately without damaging his car.

The only person who could beat Dixon to the title, Josef Newgarden, was ninth fastest, less than a tenth of a second ahead of Team Penske-Chevrolet teammate Scott McLaughlin – making his IndyCar race debut today – and a couple of tenths up on yesterday’s pole-winner Will Power.

The race begins at 2.30pm local (Eastern) time on NBC in the U.S..

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Colton Herta	Andretti Harding Steinbrenner Autosport	22	1'01.601		105.193
2	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	27	1'01.625	0.024	105.151
3	Felix Rosenqvist	Chip Ganassi Racing	19	1'01.836	0.234	104.793
4	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	16	1'01.871	0.270	104.734
5	Sébastien Bourdais	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	21	1'01.982	0.380	104.546
6	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Autosport	26	1'01.991	0.390	104.531
7	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	19	1'02.131	0.530	104.295
8	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	26	1'02.213	0.612	104.157
9	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	25	1'02.246	0.645	104.102
10	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	23	1'02.265	0.664	104.070
11	Alex Palou	Dale Coyne Racing with Team Goh	21	1'02.276	0.675	104.052
12	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	21	1'02.292	0.691	104.025
13	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	22	1'02.322	0.721	103.975
14	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	19	1'02.326	0.725	103.968
15	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	27	1'02.338	0.737	103.949
16	Will Power	Team Penske	26	1'02.450	0.848	103.763
17	Max Chilton	Carlin	21	1'02.659	1.058	103.416
18	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	27	1'02.684	1.082	103.376
19	Marco Andretti	Andretti Herta Autosport with Marco & Curb-Agajani	19	1'02.695	1.094	103.356
20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	24	1'02.746	1.145	103.273
21	Santino Ferrucci	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan	23	1'02.779	1.178	103.218
22	Oliver Askew	Arrow McLaren SP	25	1'02.791	1.189	103.200
23	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	26	1'02.811	1.210	103.166
24	Charlie Kimball	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	18	1'03.360	1.759	102.271
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