Late rains trimmed the third day of Indianapolis 500 practice from eight hours to a little over six, but it wasn’t a major hindrance on the field of 34 drivers who turned 1896 combined laps on Thursday.
The fastest driver of all was Arrow McLaren’s Pato O’Ward who, like the other fastest drivers of the day, put in an early lap that stood throughout the morning and afternoon. The Mexican’s 228.861mph lap in his No. 5 Chevy was aided, like every quick lap on Thursday, with an aerodynamic tow.
“Good day for us,” O’Ward. “We just keep on working with our race car, getting her peppered in and did some qualifying sims. Would have (liked to have) had a little bit more of time to do some quali sims but the rain had other plans, but no big issue. I’m happy and tomorrow is Fast Friday, so I’m going to go fast.”
The opening half of the running saw drivers fire out at 10am ET and try to conduct qualifying simulations, but those attempts were soon blighted as too many cars were on track to allow four-lap runs without a tow. O’Ward went fastest at 10:45am and stayed there, with Scott McLaughlin in the No. 3 Team Penske Chevy (227.318mph) and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Alex Palou in the No. 10 Honda (226.915mph) locking themselves into second and third.
The first crash of the event took place at 11:31am when Ganassi’s Linus Lundqvist hit the Turn 2 wall and walked away unhurt.
Moving into the fifth hour of running at 3pm, no changes at the top were registered as O’Ward, McLaughlin, and Palou remained 1-2-3, and behind them, the same cluster of Colton Herta, Josef Newgarden, Marco Andretti, Lundqvist, Ed Carpenter, Will Power, and Scott Dixon completed the top 10. The higher afternoon temperatures made for slower speeds in the 217-219mph range as the field focused on race-day running in turbulent lead-and-follow air.
Marcus Ericsson’s tough week at Indy with Andretti Global continued when he became the second driver to crash on Thursday. The Swede spun and hit the Turn 4 wall at 3:49pm, clipping the apron in Turn 4 — an identical mistake to his countryman Linus Lundqvist who dipped low at Turn 2 and had the same result — and smashing the left side of the car against the SAFER barrier before spinning towards and clipping the pit entry attenuator and coming to a stop on pit lane.