Barber IndyCar: Andretti beats Penskes in FP2
Marco Andretti threw in the best laptime of the weekend so far to nudge the Penske drivers aside and grab top spot in IndyCar’s second practice session at Barber Motorsports Park.
Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt
Andretti, who has shown a genuine resurgence on road and street courses in 2017, lapped the 2.38-mile course in 1min07.7134sec, an average of 122.280mph, as all the drivers sampled the softer alternate Firestone compound.
That was enough to put the Andretti Autosport-Honda driver 0.032sec clear of the fastest Penske-Chevrolet, that of 2014 champion Will Power, with Power’s teammates 2016 champ Simon Pagenaud and three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves in second and third, roughly a tenth apart.
Scott Dixon’s fifth place and Charlie Kimball’s sixth suggested Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda had made some decent setup changes after a slow morning session, although Kimball did have an off trying to better his time.
Mikhail Aleshin was seventh for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda, with Josef Newgarden eighth in the fourth Penske, championship leader Sebastien Bourdais (Dale Coyne Racing-Honda) ninth, and Ryan Hunter-Reay 10th for Andretti Autosport. The 2012 champ ran off the road on what would have been his fastest lap on the reds, however.
Zach Veach, subbing for JR Hildebrand, closed the gap down to the top time to 2sec off, 1sec slower than Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevy teammate Spencer Pigot.
Other drivers to have incidents but recover and continue were rookie Ed Jones (Coyne) and Ganassi’s sophomore Max Chilton.
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