NOLA IndyCar: Scott Dixon leads practice three for Ganassi

On a track that had dried out following Friday's rain-affected second practice, the Ganassi driver posted the day's first sub-1m19s lap roughly halfway into the session.

He made a couple of subsequent improvements to finish up at 1m18.5538s, 0.3 seconds faster than the benchmark set on Friday by his team-mate Tony Kanaan.

Penske's Simon Pagenaud came within 0.05s of matching Dixon's time, while BHA rookie Gabby Chaves was just 0.05s further adrift as the best of the Honda-powered runners behind the leading Chevrolets.

Reigning champion Will Power enjoyed a brief stint on top before his time was beaten by Dixon, and he finished up fourth-fastest ahead of Ganassi rookie Sage Karam.

In contrast to Friday's proliferation of red flags, the session was relatively incident-free.

Kanaan and James Hinchcliffe both caused brief stoppages with harmless spins, but the only real delay came right at the start, when a telemetry problem resulted in the green flag being waved 15 minutes late.

RESULTS:

Pos	Driver	Team	Car	Time	Gap
1	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.5538s	-
2	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.6119s	0.0581s
3	Gabby Chaves	Bryan Herta Autosport	Dallara/Honda	1m18.7220s	0.1682s
4	Will Power	Team Penske	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.7246s	0.1708s
5	Sage Karam	Chip Ganassi Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.7741s	0.2203s
6	Carlos Munoz	Andretti Autosport	Dallara/Honda	1m18.8226s	0.2688s
7	Josef Newgarden	CFH Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.8422s	0.2884s
8	Tony Kanaan	Chip Ganassi Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.8571s	0.3033s
9	Charlie Kimball	Chip Ganassi Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.8811s	0.3273s
10	Sebastien Bourdais	KVSH Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m18.9564s	0.4026s
11	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	Dallara/Honda	1m19.0127s	0.4589s
12	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	Dallara/Honda	1m19.0539s	0.5001s
13	Stefano Coletti	KV Racing Technology	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m19.1176s	0.5638s
14	Juan Pablo Montoya	Team Penske	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m19.2155s	0.6617s
15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan	Dallara/Honda	1m19.2398s	0.6860s
16	Carlos Huertas	Dale Coyne Racing	Dallara/Honda	1m19.2514s	0.6976s
17	Luca Filippi	CFH Racing	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m19.4303s	0.8765s
18	Helio Castroneves	Team Penske	Dallara/Chevrolet	1m19.5671s	1.0133s
19	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	Dallara/Honda	1m19.5893s	1.0355s
20	Simona de Silvestro	Andretti Autosport	Dallara/Honda	1m19.7001s	1.1463s
21	Jack Hawksworth	AJ Foyt Enterprises	Dallara/Honda	1m19.8662s	1.3124s
22	James Jakes	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	Dallara/Honda	1m20.1590s	1.6052s
23	Takuma Sato	AJ Foyt Enterprises	Dallara/Honda	1m20.3860s	1.8322s
24	Francesco Dracone	Dale Coyne Racing	Dallara/Honda	1m21.2409s	2.6871s