Aleshin leads first practice as three cars crash

Aleshin clocked a tow-assisted 221.932mph lap to head a Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda 1-2 ahead of teammate James Hinchcliffe, with Andretti Autosport’s Alexander Rossi and Carlos Munoz making it four Honda-powered cars in the top six. The Chevrolet drivers mixing it with the best of the HPD cars were Ed Carpenter Racing’s Josef Newgarden (third) and Team Penske’s Will Power (sixth).

Following Hunter-Reay’s accident in the opening half-hour both Kimball’s Chip Ganassi Racing entry and the Penske of Montoya found the wall.

Kimball, who unlike Hunter-Reay was “on race downforce and trying to mileage out an engine,” explained the #83's accident.

“We were out on cold tires, I turned in and the car [tried to rotate] a couple of times. I caught it once, twice, three times and then went in backward. When I hit, my knee hit the back of the steering wheel and popped it off.

“We were definitely pleased in testing and we made some changes today based on what we learned, so I don’t know if we got caught out. We’ll go back and figure it out.

“The guys will get the car ready for tomorrow, we’ll keep an eye on what our teammates are doing and go forward from here.”

Montoya’s accident was far less damaging but still scraped up both sides of the car, as he ran up into the wall at turn 2, caught it well enough to pancake it with both wheels, but then headed down to the bottom of the track with little steering, and got all four wheels off the deck going over a bump in the grass verge.

As with Hunter-Reay and Kimball, Montoya was checked and released by Medical.

The latter two had still done enough to clock eighth and ninth fastest times respectively, behind Ganassi’s fastest, Tony Kanaan. Ed Carpenter, in his first practice session since Iowa, completed the top 10.

Championship leader Simon Pagenaud, who was first on the scene at both the Hunter-Reay and Montoya shunts – and whose car was slightly damaged by debris from RHR’s machine – was only 14^th fastest.

IndyCar 2016 - Pocono - First practice
P.	N°	Driver	Team (Engine)	Time	Speed (mph)
1	7	Mikhail Aleshin	Schmidt (H)	40.5530	221.932
2	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt (H)	40.8553	220.290
3	21	Josef Newgarden	Carpenter (C)	40.8794	220.160
4	98	Alexander Rossi	Andretti-Herta (H)	40.9227	219.927
5	26	Carlos Muñoz	Andretti (H)	40.9240	219.920
6	12	Will Power	Penske (C)	41.0186	219.413
7	10	Tony Kanaan	Ganassi (C)	41.1427	218.751
8	83	Charlie Kimball	Ganassi (C)	41.1669	218.622
9	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	Penske (C)	41.1725	218.593
10	20	Ed Carpenter	Carpenter (C)	41.2109	218.389
11	41	Jack Hawksworth	Foyt (H)	41.2167	218.358
12	9	Scott Dixon	Ganassi (C)	41.2954	217.942
13	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti (H)	41.2973	217.932
14	22	Simon Pagenaud	Penske (C)	41.3167	217.830
15	3	Helio Castroneves	Penske (C)	41.3228	217.797
16	14	Takuma Sato	Foyt (H)	41.3746	217.525
17	27	Marco Andretti	Andretti (H)	41.3762	217.516
18	8	Max Chilton	Ganassi (C)	41.4907	216.916
19	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal (H)	41.5382	216.668
20	11	Sébastien Bourdais	KVSH (C)	41.5446	216.635
21	88	Conor Daly	Coyne (H)	42.1618	213.463
22	19	Pippa Mann	Coyne (H)	42.7145	210.701