Malukas tops second Barber IndyCar practice in mixed conditions
Heavy rain was expected to continue into IndyCar’s Saturday morning practice session at Barber Motorsports Park, but drivers were greeted (...)
Heavy rain was expected to continue into IndyCar’s Saturday morning practice session at Barber Motorsports Park, but drivers were greeted by a drying track and cloudy skies rather than the rain that soaked the previous sessions.
It wasn’t wet enough for rain tires to be used, which gave teams another chance to capture data on Firestone’s primary tires, but rain did arrive towards the end of the 45-minute session. AJ Foyt Racing’s David Malukas was fastest, with his best lap of 1m08.1661s in the No. 4 Chevy produced while he and other drivers backed up and tried to complete unencumbered qualifying simulation laps.
At the halfway point, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Louis Foster was the fastest, turning a 1m08.5567s lap in the No. 45 Honda.
With 18 minutes left in the session, a red flag was required to retrieve Pato O’Ward from the final corner. Snap oversteer at the apex sent the No. 5 Chevy offline and onto the wet grass, skipping across the gravel, and back onto the grass before hitting the tire barrier and breaking the right-front wing and damaging the steering rack.
“I lost the rear and once I got into the grass, I was just a passenger,” O’Ward, said. “I don’t know if I touched some paint while opening the radius of the corner. Maybe that’s why I lost the rear, or maybe I just lost it. The damage isn’t as bad as I thought, but the steering column is kind of ahhh. So, we didn’t want to risk it with the high-speed corners here. We’ll see what qualifying brings.”
Just before the red flag, Malukas went to the top with his 1m08.1661s lap that held for the duration. In the same timeframe, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou moved to second in the No. 10 Honda with a 1m08.1958s lap. Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard was third with a 1m08.3082s in the No. 7 Chevy.
The second red was necessitated by Andretti Global’s Marcus Ericsson with 10 minutes to go — just as rain started to fall — who lost it at the high-speed Turn 11 coming off the back straight. He flew sideways across the grass, briefly tipped onto two wheels, and settled back to earth before continuing to slide into the barriers. Like O’Ward, Ericsson was uninjured in the incident.
With the session restarting as rain continued to fall, multiple drivers found the grass and gravel, but all continued on their own.\
Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden turned eight laps but his No. 2 Chevy was taken to their transporter for an engine-related issue to be resolved.
UP NEXT: Qualifying, 2:35pm ET
