IndyCar: Newgarden tops Hy-Vee Homefront 250 Practice

Josef Newgarden set the fastest time of 18.2420s to top Friday practice for the Hy-Vee Homefront 250 IndyCar race in Iowa.

Newgarden was on it hard by lap two and on his fourth lap of the day set the fastest time of the day.  It was that easy. He turned 121 laps on the day.

Newgarden spent most of the session working in his #2 Penske Chevy on race setup and sliced through traffic like butter, making him the favorite to win one or both races of the Hy-Vee weekend doubleheader.

“As you can see, we’ve got a pretty good package,” Newgarden said. “We ran a good couple of first laps, and it was just OK in race trim. I think we need to be a little bit better. This place is tricky. I feel like everyone is going to be really good this weekend. No one stands still here in the INDYCAR SERIES.”

Newgarden’s teammate Scott McLaughlin was 2nd fastest, as the cars with Penske shocks worked best over the Iowa Speedway bumps.

Marcus Ericsson was 3rd in his #8 Ganassi Honda, just 0.0572s behind.

Colton Herta almost scraped the wall exiting Turn 4 on one lap, but was good enough for 4th quick time, just 0.0943 sec. behind.

Pato O’ward put his #5 Arrow McLaren Chevy 5th on the time charts.

This is a big weekend for Alex Palou, as he will claim a $1 million PeopleReady Force For Good Challenge with a victory in either race.

The bonus, split between the team and a charity, is awarded to the first driver who wins on all three types of track in the championship – street circuits, road courses and ovals – in a season. Palou already has a victory this season on a street circuit and a road course.

Josef Newgarden

Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden has won five of the last seven oval races and won the two oval races so far this season.  In practice today, he showed that he was dominant once again.

“Good practice for sure, no doubt. It’s difficult to say what tomorrow and Sunday is going to bring. I think everybody looks really good. There’s a lot of cars that tested here. Pretty much the whole field tested outside of us in McLaren, and I think everybody looks like they’ve raised their game.”

“So it’s not going to be easy whether it’s qualifying or the race. I think it will be pretty tight up and down the grid.”

” Legitimately, everyone looked like they were leveled up relative to last year. Practice is kind of difficult here just because you’ve got to be ten laps difference on tires makes a huge swing in performance.  So it’s hard to assess where everybody is when you’re out
there, and it’s hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison.”

“Any car that I was up against just felt like they were better than what they were doing last year. It was certainly not as easy to kind of come through the field.”

“I think Ryan (Hunter-Reay) will be good in that ECR car. He has been good here in the past, and he looks pretty sporty.”

“At the end of the day, qualifying, it doesn’t really matter. When it comes to choosing between that and a race, you have to have a good race car. You’re going to be stuck
with it for 250 laps versus two.”

“So for qualifying, you’re going to be putting the race car setup on. You might sneak in a little bit of an adjustment for trying to get a decent run in qualifying.”

“But to be honest, it’s a terrible condition setup. We’re going to be qualifying at 8:30 a.m. It’s going to be 12 degrees cooler, and then you can’t adjust the car for when it’s the middle of the day.”

“I don’t personally love that. I think you’re going to be bottoming a lot more when the conditions are super cool.”

Ryan Hunter-Reay

Driving for Ed Carpenter Racing, Ryan Hunter-Reay is no stranger to winning here in Iowa.  The American had three wins here, in 2012, 2014 and 2015, while driving for Andretti Autosport.

“I miss this place being a night race, but it is really incredible what Hy-Vee has been able to do with this place. It’s absolutely insane. Having last raced here in 2020, it looks
like a completely different racetrack.”

“It’s amazing how much different this place is than it was back in my first run in 2012. Totally different race car, but it’s challenging.”

“It’s tough to keep the tire under you. You have to be smart about it. It will be a tough one, but I think we made the right changes towards the end of the session in practice.”

“Yeah, this is the first place I’ve come back to that I’ve been on the track with this team  a with a test day.”

“This place, it either seems like, bar a few cars here or there, it seems like maybe Newgarden and Pato, I’m not sure, but it seems like you’re either under-steer or
over-steer. There’s kind of no happy medium.”

Hy-Vee Homefront 250 Practice Results

Lucille Dust reporting live from Iowa Speedway.