St. Petersburg IndyCar: Hunter-Reay on top again in FP3

The Andretti Autosport-Honda ace took just 60.8966sec to lap the 1.8-mile street/airport course, but was only 0.0039sec faster than Josef Newgarden who headed a Team Penske-Chevrolet revival after a disappointing Friday.

Newgarden’s teammates Simon Pagenaud and Will Power were fourth and fifth, separated from their sister car by Takuma Sato in the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda.

There was little time-wasting at the start of the session, with several big hitters taking to the track within the first 10 minutes including all three Penskes, and two-time and defending St. Pete winner, Sebastien Bourdais in the Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser-Sullivan-Honda.

The session was stopped 15mins in, just after Hunter-Reay went top when one of his teammates Zach Veach spun under braking for Turn 13, went off and backed his Andretti car into the tire-wall.

With 17mins to go, Hanley’s stalled DragonSpeed car at Turn 4 brought out another red.

In the closing eight minutes, Max Chilton went into a run-off area and stalled, causing a third red flag while Ed Jones ended the session slightly early with a red/checkered. That was a result of him parking his Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevy in a runoff area just after grabbing sixth place.

The two Chip Ganassi Racing-Hondas of Scott Dixon were seventh and eighth ahead of the Harding Steinbrenner Racing-Honda of Colton Herta. Marco Andretti in P10 might have been faster but got held up on his final flyer by Bourdais.

The most positive story of the session was Matheus Leist grabbing 11th for AJ Foyt Racing-Chevrolet, within half a second of Hunter-Reay’s top time.

FP3 results:

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	1'00.8966
2	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	1'00.9005	0.0039
3	30	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'00.9033	0.0067
4	22	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	1'01.0500	0.1534
5	12	Will Power	Team Penske	1'01.0750	0.1784
6	20	Ed Jones	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'01.0987	0.2021
7	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'01.1482	0.2516
8	10	Felix Rosenqvist	Chip Ganassi Racing	1'01.1677	0.2711
9	88	Colton Herta	Harding Racing	1'01.2754	0.3788
10	98	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	1'01.2914	0.3948
11	4	Matheus Leist	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'01.3708	0.4742
12	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	1'01.4006	0.5040
13	7	Marcus Ericsson	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	1'01.4867	0.5901
14	18	Sébastien Bourdais	Dale Coyne Racing	1'01.5141	0.6175
15	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	1'01.5884	0.6918
16	23	Charlie Kimball	Carlin	1'01.6295	0.7329
17	21	Spencer Pigot	Ed Carpenter Racing	1'01.6777	0.7811
18	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	1'01.7070	0.8104
19	26	Zach Veach	Andretti Autosport	1'01.7206	0.8240
20	14	Tony Kanaan	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	1'01.7533	0.8567
21	59	Max Chilton	Carlin	1'02.0459	1.1493
22	19	Santino Ferrucci	Dale Coyne Racing	1'02.2033	1.3067
23	60	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	1'02.4158	1.5192
24	81	Ben Hanley	DragonSpeed	1'03.4980	2.6014