In the morning, it was Santino Ferrucci atop the 11 drivers running at Friday’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway NTT IndyCar Series test, then it was Josef Newgarden who took the point, and in the end, it was Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou who went to the front after producing a 224.342mph lap in the No. 10 Honda to lead the field at the close of the day-long outing, the first for IndyCar’s new hybrid-spec powertrain at the 2.5-mile oval.
Newgarden was second in the No. 2 Team Penske Chevy (223.973mph), and a surprise in third—Dale Coyne Racing’s Rinus VeeKay, who agreed to test the car 24 hours prior—in the No. 18 Honda (223.383mph).
Graham Rahal was fourth in the No. 45 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda (222.650mph), Marcus Ericsson was fifth in the No. 28 Andretti Global Honda (222.324mph), and Helio Castroneves was sixth in the No. 06 Meyer Shank Racing Honda (222.075mph).
Making his debut for Ed Carpenter Racing, Alexander Rossi was seventh in the No. 20 Chevy (220.504mph), ahead of Ferrucci in the No. 14 AJ Foyt Racing Chevy (220.149mph), Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly in the No. 78 Chevy (219.997mph), Ryan Hunter-Reay in the No. 23 Dreyer & Reinbold Racing Chevy (219.955mph), and Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard, who was 11th and last in the No. 5 Chevy (219.566mph).
The energy recovery system, which adds 60hp on demand and a hike in weight with a 105-pound increase to the minimum weight of the Dallara DW12 chassis, was introduced at Mid-Ohio in July and made its long-awaited debut at the Speedway on Friday.
“It was good,” Palou told RACER. “It was a bit different with the hybrid. It was, in some areas, a little bit worse, obviously, just because of the weight. I think it’s a little bit tougher to get very close to the car in front. I’m not saying it’s impossible; like, you can overtake, but you can feel the car is a little bit heavier, and doesn’t love it when you lose some downforce.
“But on the same note, on the hybrid, it actually helps quite a lot. I think it made it quite fun to be in a group and to try and deploy in areas where you could see that they were not deploying, and then suddenly you get a big momentum and you can overtake. It’s testing. You never know if you have new tires and they have too-many-laps tires, and that’s why you feel super strong. So far, I think it was quite good.
“Actually, it was very fun. On the team side, we just went through some ideas to try and get more speed. We know that we struggled this year with speed, so we were just trying to get a bit more to see if we can fight for the race win next year.”