Sato quickest in warm-up as Servia subs for Power

Power, who demolished the track record on his way to pole position on Saturday, continued to suffer from nausea overnight, with the team opting to give his #12 Penske-Chevrolet entry to Oriol Servia for the session.

The decision on whether the Aussie will take the start in search of his third St. Pete victory is still to be made. His warm-up replacement Servia placed ninth, just 0.022s off the pace.

The early pace in final practice was set by the Penske-Chevrolet's Helio Castroneves with a high 1m02s, with the red flag coming out shortly after for Rahal Letterman Lanigan newcomer Spencer Pigot.

Pigot came to a halt at Turn 9 and stalled his #16 car, forcing a stoppage in track action for several minutes while his car was being re-fired.

When the action was back underway, Josef Newgarden took over out front – but times began to go down significantly in the second half of the run and, with 10 minutes to go, it was Andretti-Honda driver Marco Andretti who led with a 1m01.662s.

In the closing stages, Takuma Sato and Newgarden both surpassed Andretti - and while Graham Rahal entered the top spot with five minutes to go, Sato was back into the lead shortly thereafter with a lap just 0.0001s better.

And Sato's 1m01.236s would remain as the benchmark when the red flag came out with a minute to go for Juan Pablo Montoya stuffing it into the tyre barrier, ending the session.

Rahal placed second, with Newgarden, Andretti and reigning champion Scott Dixon making up the top five.

Simon Pagenaud, who will start the race form the front row, took sixth, with Mikhail Aleshin in seventh despite two trips down the escape road.

Warm-up results:

Pos.	N°	Driver	Team	Time
1	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	1:01.2361
2	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	1:01.2362
3	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	1:01.5723
4	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	1:01.6619
5	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	1:01.7303
6	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	1:01.7449
7	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	1:01.9348
8	11	Sebastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	1:01.9545
9	12	Oriol Servia	Penske (C)	1:01.9769
10	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	1:02.0060
11	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	1:02.0226
12	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	1:02.1714
13	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	1:02.1894
14	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	1:02.2448
15	19	Luca Filippi	Coyne (H)	1:02.3099
16	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti/Herta (H)	1:02.3100
17	18	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	1:02.3578
18	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	1:02.3932
19	16	Spencer Pigot	Rahal (H)	1:02.4013
20	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	1:02.6161
21	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	1:02.7098
22	26	Carlos Munoz	Andretti (H)	1:02.7982