Road America IndyCar: Grosjean leads practice, Askew stars

Grosjean’s Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda lapped the 4.014-mile course in 1min47.6781sec, an average speed of 134.200mph, eclipsing the best efforts of second fastest Ryan Hunter-Reay by 0.1243sec.

Top Penske honors went to Josef Newgarden in third who was a mere 0.04sec slower than Hunter-Reay, and only a hundredth ahead of Chip Ganassi Racing’s best effort, a 1min47.8515 from Alex Palou, who scored his first ever IndyCar podium here last year with Dale Coyne Racing.

Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda and Colton Herta in a second Andretti entry were within half a second of top spot but Herta, along with Penske’s Will Power (10^th fastest) survived off-track excursions at the end of one of their earlier flying laps.

Sebastien Bourdais, a former winner here, was seventh fastest for AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet, ahead of Penske’s rookie, Scott McLaughlin.

But it was 2019 Indy Lights champion Askew who stole the show with eighth fastest. Last week he made his season debut subbing for Felix Rosenqvist at Arrow McLaren SP, his old team, yet this week was called on to fill in for the injured Rinus VeeKay at Ed Carpenter Racing. Remarkably, despite not being granted the extra set of tires that all rookies get in the opening practice session , Askew was just 0.6sec off top spot.

Askew also starred off-track - albeit unintentionally - with this inadvertent reminder of how he got his ride this weekend:

Behind Power was the season’s only two-time winner, Pato O’Ward, while the two series debutants this weekend – Cody Ware in the second Coyne-RWR entry and Kevin Magnussen in the Arrow McLaren SP – finished up 22^nd and 23^rd respectively.

Ed Jones was unable to take part in practice because of a small fire in his Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan-Honda.

Tomorrow’s second practice begins at 10.10am local (Central) time, with qualifying following at 1.30pm and final practice at 4.30pm.

Practice results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	51	Romain Grosjean	Dale Coyne Racing with RWR	1'47.678
2	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1'47.802	0.124
3	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	1'47.841	0.163
4	10	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'47.851	0.173
5	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'48.093	0.415
6	26	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport with Curb-Agajanian	1'48.140	0.462
7	14	Sébastien Bourdais	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'48.248	0.570
8	3	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	1'48.284	0.606
9	21	Oliver Askew	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'48.300	0.621
10	12	Will Power	Team Penske	1'48.343	0.665
11	5	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	1'48.425	0.747
12	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'48.441	0.763
13	30	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'48.456	0.778
14	20	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'48.662	0.984
15	60	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	1'48.669	0.990
16	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	1'48.737	1.059
17	22	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	1'48.983	1.305
18	8	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'49.024	1.346
19	59	Max Chilton	Carlin	1'49.367	1.689
20	29	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport	1'49.535	1.857
21	48	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'50.076	2.398
22	52	Cody Ware	Dale Coyne Racing with RWR	1'50.298	2.620
23	7	Kevin Magnussen	Arrow McLaren SP	1'50.492	2.814
24	4	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'50.494	2.816
25	18	Ed Jones	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan
View full results