Indianapolis 500: Penske's Juan Pablo Montoya tops first practice
Juan Pablo Montoya led a Penske one-two on Sunday's opening day of testing for the Indianapolis 500
The current IndyCar championship leader completed 95 laps across the two sessions to finish up with a fastest speed of 226.772mph, putting him just ahead of the 226.468mph posted by team-mate and fellow past Indy winner Helio Castroneves.
The day marked the public debut of the speedway versions of the manufacturer aero kits, and while teams on both sides of the manufacturer divide will still need time to experiment with the various available aero configurations, early results were encouraging across the board.
Honda struggled to match the performance of Chevrolet's road course aero kit in the opening races of the season, but Marco Andretti managed to finish the Indy test third-fastest for the Japanese firm with a speed just 0.2s down on Castroneves.
The day also augers well for IndyCar's ongoing efforts to increase speeds. Will Power's pacesetting speed of 223.057mph from the opening day of practice last year was beaten by 21 cars on Sunday, and Castroneves believes that the frontrunners will move into the mid-230mph range later in the month.
"I think that's realistic," said the Brazilian.
"Obviously in the beginning we're still going to be looking for details, [but] I feel it's going to be even faster than 230.
"Last year we were able to get 231 in some of the laps on average, and I feel that we might be able to go two, three miles an hour faster than that."
The day marked the IndyCar return of Justin Wilson, who was fastest for Andretti Autosport in the morning session and finished up 15th-quickest at the end of the day.
Also making a comeback was Davey Hamilton, who shook down Townsend Bell's Dreyer & Reinbold/Kingdom Racing car due to Bell's sportscar commitments at Laguna Seca.
"It's cool to be back and in a race car," said Hamilton, whose last IndyCar appearance was at Texas in 2011.
"We're just running the car to shake it down and do a system check. We're doing a few baseline runs.
"It's definitely not a full test; just for today and then Townsend will take over."
Teams will now switch their attention to preparations for next weekend's IndyCar race on the IMS road course before switching back to speedway-spec to continue practicing for the 500.
SUNDAY PRACTICE TIMES:
Pos Driver Team/Car Time Speed 1. Juan Pablo Montoya Penske/Chevy 39.6874s 226.772 2. Helio Castroneves Penske/Chevy 39.7407s 226.468 3. Marco Andretti Andretti/Honda 39.7759s 226.268 4. Scott Dixon Ganassi/Chevy 39.8440s 225.881 5. Simon Pageanud Penske/Chevy 39.8864s 225.641 6. Takuma Sato Foyt/Honda 39.8987s 225.571 7. Simona de Silvestro Andretti/Honda 39.9438s 225.317 8. Ed Carpenter CFH/Chevy 39.9544s 225.257 9. Ryan Hunter-Reay Andretti/Honda 39.9631s 225.208 10. Sage Karam Ganassi/Chevy 40.0122s 224.931 11. Carlos Munoz Andretti/Honda 40.0237s 224.867 12. Tony Kanaan Ganassi/Chevy 40.0305s 224.829 13. Gabby Chaves Herta/Honda 40.0502s 224.718 14. Will Power Penske/Chevy 40.0605s 224.660 15. Justin Wilson Andretti/Honda 40.1276s 224.285 16. Pippa Mann Coyne/Honda 40.1991s 223.886 17. Josef Newgarden CFH/Chevy 40.2083s 223.834 18. Oriol Servia Rahal/Honda 40.2355s 223.683 19. James Hinchcliffe Schmidt/Honda 40.2544s 223.578 20. Conor Daly Schmidt/Honda 40.3066s 223.288 21. James Jakes Schmidt/Honda 40.3242s 223.191 22. Charlie Kimball Ganassi/Chevy 40.4154s 222.687 23. Sebastien Bourdais KV/Chevy 40.4257s 222.631 24. Jack Hawksworth Foyt/Honda 40.4305s 222.604 25. Graham Rahal Rahal/Honda 40.5929s 221.714 26. Davey Hamilton DRR/Chevy 40.9166s 219.960 27. Bryan Clauson Byrd's/Chevy 41.1927s 218.485
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