IndyCar: Herta tops opening practice at Barber

No. 26 Andretti Autosport driver Colton Herta turned a lap of 1m06.5149s to top opening practice of the Honda GP of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park.

Herta just nipped defending race winner Alex Palou in the #10 Ganassi Honda by 0.05s

“I was really happy with how the car was,” Herta said. “We were one of the lucky ones that got to test here (recently), so we did a lot of stuff on that day to help us prepare for this weekend, and it showed. We came in here and rolled off the truck, and the car was really nice right away.”

Alexander Rossi and Romain Grosjean were 3rd and 4th giving Andretti Autosport 3 of the top-4 positions. Honda-powered cars were 1-2-3-4 today, but watch out for the Chevys come Saturday.

Scott McLaughlin rounded out the top-5 in the #3 Penske Chevy ahead of the #9 Ganassi Honda of Scott Dixon.

The No. 77 of Callum Ilott finished Practice 1 in the 8th spot, which is impressive given his team, Juncos Hollinger Racing, is in their first full-time IndyCar season

Points leader Josef Newgarden worked on race setup and pounded out a lot of laps with a heavy fuel load the entire session.  Rest assured that the 3-time winner here will be a factor to win and will qualify better tomorrow.

Dead last was the only female driver, Tatiana Calderon, the Brazilian still learning what it takes to wrestle the #11 AJ Foyt Chevy up the leaderboard.

Drivers noted that the track was unusually slippery on Friday, with a chance of rain Saturday, and more on Sunday, if the track gets wet, the track will be really slippery.

Practice 1 Results

Pos No Name Time Diff Gap Laps Speed Engine Team
1 26 Colton Herta 1:06.5149 0.000s 0.000s 15 124.483 Honda Andretti Autosport
2 10 Alex Palou 1:06.5657 0.0508 0.0508 17 124.388 Honda Chip Ganassi Racing
3 27 Alexander Rossi 1:06.6657 0.1508 0.1000 14 124.202 Honda Andretti Autosport
4 28 Romain Grosjean 1:06.7046 0.1897 0.0389 16 124.129 Honda Andretti Autosport
5 3 Scott McLaughlin 1:06.8705 0.3556 0.1659 22 123.821 Chevy Team Penske
6 9 Scott Dixon 1:06.9251 0.4102 0.0546 16 123.720 Honda Chip Ganassi Racing
7 5 Pato O’Ward 1:06.9838 0.4689 0.0587 16 123.612 Chevy Arrow McLaren SP
8 77 Callum Ilott 1:07.0861 0.5712 0.1023 20 123.423 Chevy Juncos Hollinger Racing
9 8 Marcus Ericsson 1:07.1012 0.5863 0.0151 17 123.396 Honda Chip Ganassi Racing
10 21 Rinus VeeKay 1:07.1155 0.6006 0.0143 18 123.369 Chevy Ed Carpenter Racing
11 45 Jack Harvey 1:07.1841 0.6692 0.0686 17 123.243 Honda Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
12 06 Helio Castroneves 1:07.2293 0.7144 0.0452 14 123.161 Honda Meyer Shank Racing
13 7 Felix Rosenqvist 1:07.3416 0.8267 0.1123 17 122.955 Chevy Arrow McLaren SP
14 29 Devlin DeFrancesco 1:07.3817 0.8668 0.0401 20 122.882 Honda Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport
15 30 Christian Lundgaard 1:07.4004 0.8855 0.0187 21 122.848 Honda Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
16 12 Will Power 1:07.4132 0.8983 0.0128 22 122.825 Chevy Team Penske
17 15 Graham Rahal 1:07.4457 0.9308 0.0325 17 122.765 Honda Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing
18 2 Josef Newgarden 1:07.5505 1.0356 0.1048 15 122.575 Chevy Team Penske
19 20 Conor Daly 1:07.5747 1.0598 0.0242 17 122.531 Chevy Ed Carpenter Racing
20 14 Kyle Kirkwood 1:07.6110 1.0961 0.0363 17 122.465 Chevy AJ Foyt Enterprises
21 60 Simon Pagenaud 1:07.6916 1.1767 0.0806 17 122.319 Honda Meyer Shank Racing
22 51 Takuma Sato 1:07.7473 1.2324 0.0557 17 122.219 Honda Dale Coyne Racing w/RWR
23 18 David Malukas 1:07.9687 1.4538 0.2214 16 121.821 Honda Dale Coyne Racing with HMD
24 4 Dalton Kellett 1:08.4288 1.9139 0.4601 19 121.002 Chevy AJ Foyt Enterprises
25 48 Jimmie Johnson 1:08.4633 1.9484 0.0345 21 120.941 Honda Chip Ganassi Racing
26 11 Tatiana Calderon 1:09.2677 2.7528 0.8044 21 119.536 Chevy AJ Foyt Enterprises