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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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