Practice report

IndyCar Gateway: Power tops Palou in first practice

IndyCar championship leader Will Power led the way in opening practice at the Gateway oval, leading Chip Ganassi Racing rival Alex Palou.

Team Penske driver Power was the first to lap in the 176mph bracket in practice for the final oval round of the 2022 season, before Devlin De Francesco then sent his Andretti Autosport-run car around at an average of 177mph.

Josef Newgarden – a three-time winner at World Wide Technology Raceway – then put everyone in perspective with a 179.660mph effort on his ninth lap.

Scott McLaughlin, who finished fourth here last year, got close to his team-mate with a 179.172mph lap, and at that time the pair of them were the only drivers to hit 195mph through the Turn 1 speed trap.

But it was a driver who ran ‘only’ 194 into Turn 1, Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren SP, who hit the top spot with 12 minutes to go, with the first 180mph lap of the weekend.

Soon after, Graham Rahal moved into second with a 179.713mph effort for Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Then Pato O’Ward made it an AMSP 1-2, just 0.0074sec/0.052mph slower than his team-mate.

Alex Palou, Chip Ganassi Racing Honda

Photo by: Phillip Abbott / Motorsport Images

Both were pushed down by Alex Palou’s qualifying simulation, a 180.208mph lap, before McLaughlin joined them in the 180mph bracket, and then Will Power went fastest with a 180.539 with six minutes to go.

That remained the top speed of the session, although it ended with six drivers north of 180mph, and several drivers had their qualifying sim runs ruined by traffic.

Chip Ganassi Racing will be content to have two cars in the top five at what has become regarded as ‘a Penske track’.

Andretti Autosport was disappointing overall, even though De Francesco – who tested here along with his fellow rookies last week – did himself great credit by being fastest of the quartet in 11^th, fractionally ahead of Colton Herta and Alexander Rossi.

Takuma Sato and Malukas were ninth and 13^th for Dale Coyne Racing, Malukas turning the most laps at 57.

Qualifying begins at 3.15pm local (Central) time.

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Gap	Mph
1	Will Power	Team Penske	47		180.539
2	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	51	0.0458	180.208
3	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	43	0.0656	180.065
4	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	42	0.0681	180.047
5	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	42	0.0688	180.042
6	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	36	0.0730	180.012
7	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	42	0.1145	179.713
8	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	42	0.1219	179.660
9	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing	46	0.1403	179.528
10	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	41	0.1490	179.466
11	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	30	0.2020	179.087
12	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	38	0.2958	178.421
13	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing	57	0.2973	178.411
14	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	40	0.3131	178.299
15	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	48	0.3185	178.261
16	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	47	0.3703	177.896
17	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	41	0.3963	177.713
18	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	46	0.4407	177.402
19	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	54	0.5162	176.876
20	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	47	0.5945	176.333
21	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	47	0.5950	176.330
22	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	51	0.6349	176.054
23	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	47	0.7921	174.978
24	Ed Carpenter	Ed Carpenter Racing	35	0.9089	174.187
25	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	52	0.9526	173.893
26	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	53	1.0499	173.242
View full results