Dixon tops first practice at Watkins Glen, Daly crashes

The Chip Ganassi Racing-Chevrolet  ace lapped the 3.37-mile course in 1min23.8921sec, an impressive 144.614mph, and some four seconds under the track record.

The reigning champion was 0.36sec faster than KVSH Racing-Chevy’s Sebastien Bourdais, with Team Penske-Chevrolet’s Will Power third quick, almost a further half second off.

Tony Kanaan was fourth for Ganassi , with Graham Rahal fastest Honda, around one second off Dixon’s best.

Championship leader Simon Pagenaud was eighth, with Alexander Rossi showing the same potential he displayed in the test here last month, fastest of the Andretti Autosport-Hondas.

The Schmidt Peterson Motorsport cars, which have been the most consistent performers from the Honda ranks for the majority of the season, were a disappointing 15^th and 18^th. But they were better off than Conor Daly who shunted on his fifth lap, when the #18 Dale Coyne Racing-Honda spun out of control in The Boot. It was a shunt that the driver blamed on left over rainwater in the rumble strips.

Said Daly: “The whole rear snapped quicker than it has in my entire life. It had to be water ... Just sucks.

“The whole time I was going backwards, I was thinking ‘how in the world did this happen?’”

Teammate for the weekend RC Enerson, who impressed in his debut weekend for Coyne back in Mid-Ohio, ended the session 17^th fastest. 

Cla	#	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	9	Scott Dixon	10	1'23.8921			144.614
2	11	Sébastien Bourdais	11	1'24.2547	0.3626	0.3626	143.992
3	12	Will Power	12	1'24.7401	0.8480	0.4854	143.167
4	10	Tony Kanaan	12	1'24.7934	0.9013	0.0533	143.077
5	15	Graham Rahal	12	1'24.8563	0.9642	0.0629	142.971
6	2	Juan Pablo Montoya	12	1'24.8949	1.0028	0.0386	142.906
7	21	Josef Newgarden	9	1'24.9028	1.0107	0.0079	142.893
8	22	Simon Pagenaud	13	1'25.0393	1.1472	0.1365	142.663
9	3	Helio Castroneves	11	1'25.1587	1.2666	0.1194	142.463
10	98	Alexander Rossi	14	1'25.2667	1.3746	0.1080	142.283
11	83	Charlie Kimball	13	1'25.5153	1.6232	0.2486	141.869
12	8	Max Chilton	11	1'25.6268	1.7347	0.1115	141.685
13	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	10	1'25.7017	1.8096	0.0749	141.561
14	14	Takuma Sato	12	1'25.8544	1.9623	0.1527	141.309
15	5	James Hinchcliffe	11	1'25.8721	1.9800	0.0177	141.280
16	20	Spencer Pigot	15	1'25.9610	2.0689	0.0889	141.134
17	19	R.C. Enerson	15	1'25.9777	2.0856	0.0167	141.106
18	7	Mikhail Aleshin	12	1'25.9785	2.0864	0.0008	141.105
19	41	Jack Hawksworth	13	1'26.0642	2.1721	0.0857	140.965
20	27	Marco Andretti	12	1'26.1094	2.2173	0.0452	140.891
21	26	Carlos Munoz	12	1'26.1865	2.2944	0.0771	140.765
22	88	Conor Daly	4	1'27.2666	3.3745	1.0801	139.022