Although James Hinchcliffe held top spot for Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda for much of the session, the teams took a fairly measured approach to tire usage, and it wasn’t until the closing 12 minutes that times started to fall, and speeds started to climb.

Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay was the first driver to eclipse the 182mph barrier with a lap of 20.2143sec around the 1.022-mile oval, but with six minutes to go, Pagenaud knocked him back with a 182.313 lap in the #22 Penske-Chevrolet.

The 2016 champion was then demoted by Tony Kanaan’s AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet, which shone so brightly at the preseason test here and in this session lapped at 182.313mph. However, with his very last flyer, Pagenaud clawed back top spot with a 182.375mph run.

Dale Coyne Racing-Honda’s St. Petersburg winner Sebastien Bourdais had a good stab at top spot but had to settle for P3, enough to best Hunter-Reay’s earlier effort, and that of RHR’s Andretti Autosport teammate, Alexander Rossi .

Hinchcliffe’s 181.824mph was good enough for sixth, ahead of Ed Jones in the faster of the two Chip Ganassi Racing-Hondas, Penske’s reigning champion Josef Newgarden, and rookies Matheus Leist (Foyt) and Robert Wickens (SPM).

Surprisingly, neither Scott Dixon (Ganassi) nor Will Power (Penske) reached 180mph. Indeed, they were only a tenth of a second faster than two more impressive rookies – Kyle Kaiser, who for this race replaces St. Pete debutant Rene Binder in the Juncos Racing-Chevy, and Pietro Fittipaldi in the second Coyne car.

The Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda duo, Takuma Sato and Graham Rahal, who between them topped all four preseason test sessions here, were only 18^th and 17^th respectively.

However, conditions will change before the next session – qualifying – to be held at 5pm local (Pacific) time.

IndyCar, Phoenix first practice

Cla	#	Driver	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	22	Simon Pagenaud	34	20.1738			182.375
2	14	Tony Kanaan	29	20.1807	0.0069	0.0069	182.313
3	18	Sébastien Bourdais	25	20.2001	0.0263	0.0194	182.138
4	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	24	20.2143	0.0405	0.0142	182.010
5	27	Alexander Rossi	32	20.2286	0.0548	0.0143	181.881
6	5	James Hinchcliffe	42	20.2349	0.0611	0.0063	181.824
7	10	Ed Jones	32	20.3186	0.1448	0.0837	181.075
8	1	Josef Newgarden	28	20.3348	0.1610	0.0162	180.931
9	4	Matheus Leist	42	20.3716	0.1978	0.0368	180.604
10	6	Robert Wickens	40	20.4164	0.2426	0.0448	180.208
11	9	Scott Dixon	36	20.4950	0.3212	0.0786	179.517
12	12	Will Power	35	20.5381	0.3643	0.0431	179.140
13	32	Kyle Kaiser	54	20.6070	0.4332	0.0689	178.541
14	19	Zachary Claman DeMelo	45	20.6571	0.4833	0.0501	178.108
15	98	Marco Andretti	23	20.6900	0.5162	0.0329	177.825
16	21	Spencer Pigot	32	20.7152	0.5414	0.0252	177.609
17	15	Graham Rahal	30	20.7561	0.5823	0.0409	177.259
18	30	Takuma Sato	32	20.7658	0.5920	0.0097	177.176
19	88	Gabby Chaves	25	20.8596	0.6858	0.0938	176.379
20	20	Ed Carpenter	38	20.9273	0.7535	0.0677	175.809
21	26	Zach Veach	36	21.1017	0.9279	0.1744	174.356
22	23	Charlie Kimball	28	21.1338	0.9600	0.0321	174.091
23	59	Max Chilton	29	21.4195	1.2457	0.2857	171.769