WEST ALLIS, Wis. — The King of the Short Ovals reclaimed his throne, at least in Friday’s practice session, as Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden had the fastest lap at 159.430 miles per hour at The Milwaukee Mile.
The driver of the No. 2 Snap-On Chevrolet is IndyCar’s best on short ovals, and he proved why on Friday evening.
“It was an OK start,” Newgarden said. “We’ll see what tomorrow brings. It’s going to be a tough race. I think there was a lot of learning with the tires because we had two different compounds to start. Wow, I shouldn’t say. They were different compounds, different ages, as well, which is a big difference.
“Feel like everybody was trying to figure out how to make the most of that. You have to adjust. You’re kind of tuned into one, then you have to tune into the other. I think it was a pretty good start. We’ll satisfy how the weekend goes.”
Dennis Hauger of Dale Coyne Racing was second at 159.378 mph in the No. 19 Honda, Alex Palou of Chip Ganassi was third in the No. 10 Honda, David Malukas of Team Penske fourth at 158.665 mph in the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet and Rinus VeeKay of Juncos Hollinger Racing rounding out the top five at 158.648 mph in the No. 76 Chevrolet.
It didn’t take long for the champion-in-waiting Alex Palou to race to the top of the scoring screen with a speed of 158.890 miles per hour in the No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda. His teammate, Scott Dixon, was second at 156.239 mph in the No. 9 PNC Bank Honda in the first 12 minutes of the practice session.
It also didn’t take long for Nolan Siegel to pound the Turn 2 wall with 1:13 left in the all-cars session. Siegel’s No. 6 Chevrolet spun around and backed into the Turn 2 SAFER Barrier for the first caution period of the session.
“Totally caught me off guard, we were on a short baseline run and had a huge moment in the middle of the corner,” Siegel said. “A little confused there. We’ll look into it. Hoping, we can get back out. Huge shoutout to the crew. It’s a difficult stretch back-to-back and we have two races this weekend. I’m bummed to start it on that known for these guys, but I have a lot of trust in them, and we will get back out there.
“We’ll catch back up. It’s not ideal, but we will figure it out tomorrow and hopefully, have a pretty good day on Saturday and a good day on Sunday.”
After a 6-minute cleanup, it was back to green-flag practice.
With 55 minutes left in the only practice session of the weekend, another CGR driver, Kyffin Simpson, took over second quick at 157.430 mph in the No. 8 Sunoco Honda followed by last year’s Milwaukee winner, Christian Rasmussen, at 157.246 mph in the No. 21 Splenda Chevrolet for ECR. Dixon was bumped down to fourth.
A few minutes later, Alexander Rossi of ECR took over second at 158.538 mph in the No. 20 Java House Chevrolet.
Last week’s big winner in the Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington DC, Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Global, raced up to third at 157.655 mph in the No. 27 Honda before he was bounced back a position by Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward’s lap at 157.810 mph in the No. 5 Chevrolet.
With 23:43 left in the session, two of the top drivers on the track crashed when Kirkwood’s No. 27 Honda was low and Rasmussen’s No. 21 made crashed on the backstretch. It appeared Rasmussen tried to turn in, but Kirkwood also wanted to turn in that area of the track heading into Turn 3. Both cars were involved in a hard hit with Rasmussen’s No. 21 Chevrolet tipping into the outside wall for a moment before returning wheels onto the track.
Rasmussen’s car No. 21 will not be repaired and the team is preparing a backup tub for ECR.
Once the cars were towed back to the paddock and the area was cleaned up, it was back to practice, and it didn’t take long before an old name was the new leader.
It was Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden, who turned the fastest lap in the final 10 minutes of the all-cars session with a lap at 159.430 mph in the No. 2 Snap-On Team Penske Chevrolet. That moved Palou down to second as this part of practice was winding down.
With 55 seconds left, rookie Dennis Hauger turned the second fastest speed at 159.377 and that is where he finished the session.
Because this was the only practice session of the weekend entering Saturday morning’s qualifications for a doubleheader weekend, the drivers have to pretty much “get after it” rather than have plenty of time to prepare the car.
“That’s a good way to put it,” Newgarden said. “It feels like a go-kart event, which is not a bad thing. Go-karting is the most fun that you have in racing. It feels very pure, kind of a little bit kind of chaotic, get after it, just go do it. I think that’s a good thing. It’s kind of fun.
“But it’s also tough. It’s tough on the teams to kind of have to show up with your A game when it’s like that. If you don’t roll off the truck good, it’s very difficult to catch up on a weekend like this, very difficult. You’re sort of trying to learn through the race then to fix it for race two, which is a really bad equation on the doubleheader.
“You don’t want that to be the case. I think we’ve done our homework for the most part. I think we should have something to fight with. We were all here testing, so you have to lean on the tests a lot for what’s happening. The only caveat to that is the tire difference. Slightly different to the test, so you have to factor that into your decision making.”
