St. Petersburg IndyCar: Newgarden heads Penske team-mate Power

After several minutes were lost when the data system went down, the session got underway with rookie trio Scott McLaughlin, Jimmie Johnson and Romain Grosjean heading out first.

But it was Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi who was first to break into the 60-second bracket with a 60.865s.

Rossi’s team-mate Colton Herta responded by snipping just 0.03s off that lap, with nine-time St Petersburg polesitter Power lowering the barrier by a further 0.02s.

Felix Rosenqvist’s progress was hampered by a technical issue in his Arrow McLaren SP, and when he got underway he outbraked himself at Turn 7.

Newgarden, who has won the last two races at St Petersburg, sprung to the top of the times with a 60.803s with just 11 minutes to go.

“It’s hard to get [tyre] temperature, on the first initial laps,” said the two-time IndyCar champion. “It’s what most are going to struggle with this weekend. But I expect we'll get more grip the more we run."

Josef Newgarden, Team Penske Chevrolet

Photo by: Barry Cantrell / Motorsport Images

Sebastien Bourdais caused a brief red when he slithered down the Turn 10 runoff with just under three minutes left, and then stalled as he tried to rejoin.

That left no time for improvements, leaving the top runners incredibly close – with the top 15 covered by just half a second led by Newgarden and Power, with Herta in third closely followed by Andretti team-mate Rossi.

All four Team Penske cars were in the top eight, as Scott Dixon re-established himself as Ganassi’s unofficial team leader in sixth place, with Barber winner Alex Palou in 20th, while Rosenqvist bounced back from his earlier issues to take seventh place and edge team-mate and Barber polesitter Pato O’Ward into ninth – with the Arrow McLaren SP drivers split by McLaughlin.

Fellow rookie Johnson was 2.3s off the pace but only a couple of tenths behind the more experienced Dalton Kellett, although the Foyt driver has not competed in IndyCar at this track before. Grosjean was 19th, 0.8s from the top, but ahead of Barber winner Palou.

Second practice begins at 9.45am local time on Saturday.

IndyCar St Petersburg - FP1 results

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	19	1'00.802
2	Will Power	Team Penske	16	1'00.810	0.007
3	Colton Herta	Andretti Autosport	17	1'00.834	0.031
4	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	18	1'00.865	0.062
5	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	17	1'00.899	0.096
6	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	16	1'00.915	0.112
7	Felix Rosenqvist	Arrow McLaren SP	14	1'00.995	0.192
8	Scott McLaughlin	Team Penske	20	1'01.015	0.212
9	Patricio O'Ward	Arrow McLaren SP	14	1'01.060	0.257
10	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	19	1'01.091	0.288
11	Marcus Ericsson	Chip Ganassi Racing	15	1'01.117	0.314
12	Rinus van Kalmthout	Ed Carpenter Racing	16	1'01.175	0.372
13	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	15	1'01.194	0.391
14	Sébastien Bourdais	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	16	1'01.269	0.466
15	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	16	1'01.298	0.495
16	Conor Daly	Ed Carpenter Racing	17	1'01.361	0.558
17	James Hinchcliffe	Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport	18	1'01.402	0.599
18	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	19	1'01.460	0.657
19	Romain Grosjean	Dale Coyne Racing with RWR	26	1'01.605	0.802
20	Alex Palou	Chip Ganassi Racing	19	1'01.739	0.936
21	Ed Jones	Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan	12	1'02.153	1.350
22	Max Chilton	Carlin	14	1'02.276	1.473
23	Dalton Kellett	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	20	1'02.926	2.124
24	Jimmie Johnson	Chip Ganassi Racing	26	1'03.131	2.328
View full results