IndyCar St. Petersburg: Dixon leads Herta in incident-packed opening practice

The first red flag of the session was caused by Benjamin Pedersen locking up into Turn 4, the car trying to swivel left, and making hard contact with its left front wing against the wall.

The second red flag was caused by a concrete patch of the track on the exit of fifth-gear Turn 3 coming up that needed clearing. By then the remaining three rookies – Marcus Armstrong, Sting Ray Robb and Agustin Canapino – had laid down their first five laps, since newcomers are granted an extra set of tyres.

Following the red flag, most of the top drivers immediately hit the track, and 2021 Indy Lights champion Kyle Kirkwood hit top spot with a 1m02.610s for Andretti Autosport.

There was then briefly a Swedish 1-2, with Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren ahead of Ganassi’s Marcus Ericsson until his team-mate 2021 champion Alex Palou lowered the benchmark to 1m02.212s.

Kirkwood was a long way from being done, though, and delivered a 1m01.802s on his seventh lap, with team-mate Romain Grosjean going second, albeit 0.3s behind.

The third red flag emerged with 43 minutes remaining, caused by Simon Pagenaud spinning his Meyer Shank Racing into the Turn 4 escape road and then stalling.

Team Penske’s defending champion Will Power had an alarming tail-out moment exiting the penultimate corner after damaging a right-rear toelink against a wall. That was easily fixed, and he wasted little time in moving into the top four once back on track.

Colton Herta made it in an Andretti 1-2-3 with his first representative flier, albeit 0.277s off Kirkwood, who had gotten his best mark down to 1m01.685s.

With 16 minutes to go, Christian Lundgaard smacked the Turn 3 wall hard enough in the #45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan to end his session early although he limped back to the pits without assistance. Team-mate Graham Rahal, however, who had already gone into Turn 4 run-off and tried to change the balance of the car on pitlane, revisited the same run-off after locking up and then stalling.

Benjamin Pedersen, AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet

Photo by: IndyCar Series

Josef Newgarden had a four-wheel drift into the wall that necessitated repairs, while team-mate McLaughlin had another moment at Turn 3, but not before Palou delivered a new top time, a 1m01.679s on his 23rd lap.

With under three minutes to go, Ed Carpenter Racing’s Rinus VeeKay went third fastest, 0.172s off the top, with six-time champion Scott Dixon moving into fourth, and his Ganassi team-mate Marcus less than one-tenth behind.

Dixon then went fastest with 1m01.615s, a mere 0.065s up on Palou, with Herta managing to split them on his final flier.

Pagenaud jumped into the top five in the closing couple of minutes too, meaning they were split by less than a tenth of a second.

VeeKay’s time was good enough to retain sixth as fastest Chevrolet driver, with Malukas separating him from Power, defending IndyCar Series champion in eighth.

Armstrong was far and away the best rookie, finishing his first official session in ninth, 0.33s behind team-mate and compatriot Dixon, but just ahead of another Kiwi in McLaughlin.

IndyCar St. Petersburg - FP1 results

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Mph
1	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	29	1'01.6145		105.170
2	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	25	1'01.6475	0.0330	105.114
3	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	25	1'01.6790	0.0645	105.060
4	Kyle Kirkwood	Andretti Autosport	26	1'01.6851	0.0706	105.050
5	Simon Pagenaud	Meyer Shank Racing	28	1'01.6963	0.0818	105.031
6	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	25	1'01.8514	0.2369	104.767
7	David Malukas	Dale Coyne Racing	24	1'01.8613	0.2468	104.750
8	Will Power	Team Penske	27	1'01.8915	0.2770	104.699
9	Marcus Armstrong	Chip Ganassi Racing	35	1'01.9444	0.3299	104.610
10	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	26	1'01.9882	0.3737	104.536
11	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren	23	1'02.0177	0.4032	104.486
12	Callum Ilott	Juncos Hollinger Racing	25	1'02.0360	0.4215	104.455
13	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	29	1'02.0733	0.4588	104.393
14	Romain Grosjean	Andretti Autosport	30	1'02.1064	0.4919	104.337
15	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren	26	1'02.1094	0.4949	104.332
16	Devlin DeFrancesco	Andretti Autosport	26	1'02.2507	0.6362	104.095
17	Jack Harvey	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	26	1'02.3236	0.7091	103.973
18	Helio Castroneves	Meyer Shank Racing	25	1'02.3290	0.7145	103.964
19	Agustin Canapino	Juncos Hollinger Racing	34	1'02.3629	0.7484	103.908
20	Santino Ferrucci	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	29	1'02.4032	0.7887	103.841
21	Alexander Rossi	Arrow McLaren	22	1'02.4616	0.8471	103.744
22	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	17	1'02.5150	0.9005	103.655
23	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	29	1'02.5480	0.9335	103.600
24	Ray Robb	Dale Coyne Racing	37	1'02.8157	1.2012	103.159
25	Christian Lundgaard	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	13	1'03.0412	1.4267	102.790
26	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	18	1'03.1389	1.5244	102.631
27	Benjamin Pedersen	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	26	1'03.5134	1.8989	102.026
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