IndyCar News: Power tops Friday Practice for Long Beach GP

Team Penske Chevy #12 driver Will Power turned the overall fastest lap on Friday in opening practice for the 50th Annual Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach

Friday practice was run in three sessions – everyone in the first 40 minutes, then split into two groups for the final ten minutes each.

Power’s lap of 1m07.3227s was only 0.03s faster than the Andretti Global duo of Marcus Ericsson and Kyle Kirkwood.

“It was pretty good,” Power said. “Definitely determined to get qualifying right. Haven’t for the last couple races. Got to work on that. It’s going to be really tight.”

Power had trouble today early in the 80-minute session, divided into three groups, when his rear brakes locked and caused him to spin into a runoff area. He continued without contact.

“I had a bit of an issue with rear brakes,” Power said. “Something weird. I almost crashed twice, but the car is in a reasonable window.”

Marcus Armstrong was 4th, 0.36s behind Power.

Felix Rosenqvist rounded out the top-5, 0.39s behind Power.

The winner last time out at The Thermal Club, Alex Palou, was fastest in the combined running, but ended up 7th overall.

.A handful of other drivers also went into runoff areas without contact, including Colton Herta in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda of Andretti Global and rookie Louis Foster in the No. 45 Mi-Jack Honda of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

Pato O’Ward did make slight left-side contact with the concrete barriers lining the front straightaway after he exited the famous hairpin corner at the end of the lap in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.

Marcus Ericsson

The Andretti Global team is known for being good at road courses, especially here in Long Beach.   Kyle Kirkwood, the 2023 winner, and his teammate, Marcus Ericsson, were second and third in the first practice.

Ericsson was asked why his team does so well at this track.

“We just have a really good setup in general to work with, and the team does a really good job of preparing the cars and giving us drivers cars that we feel confident in to drive because that’s all — street course racing is so much about that confidence. It’s being close to those walls and having the confidence to push to the limit.”

“Andretti does an excellent job with that, so that makes it a pleasure to drive.”

“I think  the biggest challenge is going to be the  change from six and four on the compounds, six hard compounds and four soft, to this year five and five. It makes it maybe — you have to wait a little bit more in practice instead of saving your hard tires for Sunday a bit more. That’s the biggest difference.”

“But apart from that, it’s a lot of focus on qualifying. Obviously, a street course you want to start up front, so for us, it’s important to prep for that, and then when we accomplish that, we then start looking at Sunday and what we need to do with tires there because it’s going to be an interesting race.”

Josef Newgarden

Josef Newgarden was the third fastest overall and spoke with the media about the changes from this year to last year with the addition of the hybrid.

“Not a lot, to be quite honest, as far as from a general standpoint. It still feels like Long Beach. I think a lot of the driving techniques that you’re doing are quite similar. You’re just adding the hybrid utilization we used for half the season last year. So you’re using it a lot. You’re regenning under braking, but this hybrid system is extremely friendly within regen, so it’s comfortable under braking. There’s nothing evil about it. It’s pretty easy to drive.”

“You’re just trying to make sure that you’re optimizing how much charge you’re allowed to use per lap. We have an allocated amount of energy, and you just want to optimize that for lap time and make sure that you’re using all of it.”

“So that’s the big difference. But as far as driving here, it feels like Long Beach of the last 10 years in a good way.  Flows a lot the same that it did last year, too.”

2025 Acura GP of Long Beach Practice 1 Results

(R) Rookie