Detroit IndyCar: Castroneves fastest in FP2 as Rossi shunts

Rossi had just put his Andretti Autosport-Honda on top of the timing charts with his third flying lap, a 1min15.4323sec tour of the bumpy 2.35-mile streetcourse, when he backed his car into a wall after losing it before a slow left-hander.

Soon after the track went back to green-flag condtions, teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay spun at Turn 11 without contact, kept the engine going and continued.

Finally, on his fourth lap, Penske-Chevrolet’s Castroneves deposed Rossi with a 1min15.1511.  This morning’s pacesetter, Graham Rahal, would also slot his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda in between them with 10mins to go, 0.2sec behind Castroneves.

Fourth went to Simon Pagenaud’s Penske, ahead of Schmidt Peterson Motorsports’ Mikhail Aleshin, Indy 500 champion Takuma Sato, Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolet’s JR Hildebrand and the third Penske of Will Power.

Hunter-Reay had a clutch issue and needed a push-start to leave the pits, but managed to claim ninth fastest time ahead of the fastest Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevrolet of Tony Kanaan.

Oriol Servia, driving the second RLLR, was 11^th fastest, about 0.8sec from Rahal – commendable given this is the 42-year-old veteran's first run on a streetcourse since hastily substituting for Power in a Penske at St. Petersburg 15 months ago.

Scott Dixon completed only nine laps for Ganassi and was left languishing in 21^st, between the Dale Coyne Racing entries of rookie Ed Jones and series debutant Esteban Gutierrez who was 0.9 off his teammate and 3.3sec off the ultimate pace.

Cla	#	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	3	Helio Castroneves	15	1'15.1511			112.573
2	15	Graham Rahal	15	1'15.3519	0.2008	0.2008	112.273
3	98	Alexander Rossi	3	1'15.4323	0.2812	0.0804	112.154
4	1	Simon Pagenaud	19	1'15.4577	0.3066	0.0254	112.116
5	7	Mikhail Aleshin	17	1'15.5382	0.3871	0.0805	111.996
6	26	Takuma Sato	18	1'15.5923	0.4412	0.0541	111.916
7	21	J.R. Hildebrand	23	1'16.0380	0.8869	0.4457	111.260
8	12	Will Power	15	1'16.0593	0.9082	0.0213	111.229
9	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	12	1'16.1352	0.9841	0.0759	111.118
10	10	Tony Kanaan	13	1'16.1400	0.9889	0.0048	111.111
11	16	Oriol Servia	21	1'16.1488	0.9977	0.0088	111.098
12	5	James Hinchcliffe	19	1'16.2264	1.0753	0.0776	110.985
13	4	Conor Daly	16	1'16.3788	1.2277	0.1524	110.764
14	2	Josef Newgarden	13	1'16.5945	1.4434	0.2157	110.452
15	8	Max Chilton	20	1'16.7223	1.5712	0.1278	110.268
16	27	Marco Andretti	14	1'16.7757	1.6246	0.0534	110.191
17	83	Charlie Kimball	20	1'16.8943	1.7432	0.1186	110.021
18	20	Spencer Pigot	17	1'17.0226	1.8715	0.1283	109.838
19	14	Carlos Munoz	20	1'17.1111	1.9600	0.0885	109.712
20	19	Ed Jones	20	1'17.6095	2.4584	0.4984	109.007
21	9	Scott Dixon	13	1'17.7836	2.6325	0.1741	108.763
22	18	Esteban Gutierrez	21	1'18.5413	3.3902	0.7577	107.714