IndyCar Road America: O’Ward leads Power in second practice

In cool conditions, and with no alternate-compound tyres available in FP2, after they were used in yesterday’s first practice session, Conor Daly held top spot for Ed Carpenter Racing after 15 minutes, with a 1m46.5240s. But then defending race-winner Alex Palou delivered a third lap in his Chip Ganassi Racing was over a second quicker.

Romain Grosjean, who had his best lap on the softer Firestones in FP1 ruined by a red flag, showed he had latent pace on the primary tyres, but as he moved up to second he was still 0.6s off Palou’s benchmark and he was swiftly pushed down to third by O’Ward.

Yesterday’s pacesetter and 2019 Road America dominator Alexander Rossi had sat on pitlane for the first 20 minutes with a clutch issue and it wasn’t entirely fixed by the time the #27 rolled out for its first laps, because the Andretti Autosport crew had to get Rossi to spin up his tyres in first while the car was on the jacks, and then they simply released the jack so he hit the asphalt in a cloud of tyre smoke. The tactic worked, the Firestones bit and Rossi was able to head on out.

However, the problem wasn’t solved, and that initial fix for leaving pitlane met with disapproval from IndyCar, so the next times Rossi departed his pitbox, he was being pushed by his crew.

Alexander Rossi, Andretti Autosport Honda

Photo by: Richard Dole / Motorsport Images

With just under 15 minutes remaining in the session, several drivers took on fresh primary tyres, and Marcus Ericsson moved up to second with a 1m45.8079s to make it a Ganassi 1-2 only for Colton Herta to split the pair with a 1m45.7s lap.

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden and Will Power then moved into second and third, and Power then stayed out for an extra lap and finally displaced Palou at the top of the table by a mere 0.0213s.

Rossi’s early patience and subsequent efforts were then rewarded with third, which became fourth when Pato O’Ward delivered the fastest time of the session, a 1m45.2681s.

Christian Lundgaard of Rahal Letterman Lanigan was fastest of the rookies, in 12^th with his final lap, ahead of the two Meyer Shank Racing cars.

Series returnee Simona De Silvestro was 3.2s off the pace in the Paretta Autosport, about 1.8s off Ed Carpenter Racing pair Conor Daly and Rinus VeeKay, with whom Paretta has a technical partnership.

IndyCar Road Amercia - FP2 results

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	12	1'45.2681		137.272
2	Will Power	Team Penske	14	1'45.3849	0.1168	137.120
3	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	11	1'45.4062	0.1381	137.093
4	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	10	1'45.5576	0.2895	136.896
5	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	13	1'45.5744	0.3063	136.874
6	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	14	1'45.7664	0.4983	136.626
7	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	12	1'45.8079	0.5398	136.572
8	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	15	1'46.0022	0.7341	136.322
9	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	15	1'46.0373	0.7692	136.277
10	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	14	1'46.0617	0.7936	136.245
11	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	14	1'46.0998	0.8317	136.196
12	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	16	1'46.1046	0.8365	136.190
13	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	11	1'46.2389	0.9708	136.018
14	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	10	1'46.2553	0.9872	135.997
15	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing with HMD	11	1'46.2816	1.0135	135.963
16	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	13	1'46.4851	1.2170	135.703
17	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	14	1'46.5240	1.2559	135.654
18	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	12	1'46.5438	1.2757	135.629
19	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	15	1'46.6307	1.3626	135.518
20	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	10	1'46.6619	1.3938	135.479
21	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	14	1'46.8522	1.5841	135.237
22	Takuma Sato	Dale Coyne Racing	13	1'46.9109	1.6428	135.163
23	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	14	1'47.8402	2.5721	133.998
24	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	15	1'47.9272	2.6591	133.890
25	Kyle Kirkwood	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	5	1'48.1562	2.8881	133.607
26	Tatiana Calderon	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	14	1'48.1969	2.9288	133.557
27	Simona de Silvestro	Paretta Autosport	13	1'48.4582	3.1901	133.235
View full results