Barber IndyCar: Hinchcliffe tops another disrupted session

A red flag with less than four minutes to go, caused by an off and stall for Graham Rahal at Turn 5, meant everyone was granted one flying lap at the end of the session, and it was Hinchcliffe who produced the startling time that sent him top.

The Arrow Schmidt Peterson Motorsports-Honda driver lapped the 2.3-mile course in 68.735sec, beating Sebastien Bourdais by precisely 0.3sec.

If one side of the Arrow SPM team was happy, the other was not as the second red flag was caused by Hinchcliffe’s teammate Marcus Ericsson. Ryan Hunter-Reay had just had an off-course moment at Turn 2, reporting there might be something on the track on the exit of Turn 1, when Marcus Ericsson understeered off the track at the same spot and struck the guardrail hard enough to tear his left-front wheel loose and wedge his front wing in the barrier.

The first red was caused by Zach Veach who spun off at Turn 5 10 minutes into the session, collecting a lot of gravel that saw the team take the #26 Andretti Autosport-Honda back to the paddock for a clear-out.

Behind Bourdais, Scott Dixon nailed a good lap to grab third for Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda despite an oversteer moment under braking for T5, while Colton Herta put Harding Steinbrenner Racing car into fourth.

Takuma Sato survived another off in the second Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing-Honda to claim fifth, with Spencer Pigot claiming top Chevrolet honors in sixth.

Simon Pagenaud was fastest Team Penske driver in seventh, while Will Power had two offs in one lap, one at Turn 5 and the other at T14. He would finish the session in 15th.

Felix Rosenqvist was eighth in the second Ganassi machine, while Max Chilton was ninth for Carlin-Chevrolet, two spots ahead of rookie teammate Patricio O’Ward, the pair split by Alexander Rossi.

The Firestone situation that caused yesterday’s red alternate tires to be slower than the blacks was clarified today. The batch of reds that had been brought to last year’s race and weren’t used (due to everyone needing to run wets) had lost some of their grip and were the reds utilized in yesterday’s FP2 session.

It means that the teams head into qualifying today without having run the newest reds, although they are built to the same specification as last year’s Barber batch.

Session results

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	5	James Hinchcliffe	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	12	1'08.7351			120.462
2	18	Sébastien Bourdais	Dale Coyne Racing	12	1'09.0351	0.3000	0.3000	119.939
3	9	Scott Dixon	Chip Ganassi Racing	10	1'09.2334	0.4983	0.1983	119.595
4	88	Colton Herta	Harding Racing	14	1'09.2444	0.5093	0.0110	119.576
5	30	Takuma Sato	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	16	1'09.2692	0.5341	0.0248	119.534
6	21	Spencer Pigot	Ed Carpenter Racing	12	1'09.2784	0.5433	0.0092	119.518
7	22	Simon Pagenaud	Team Penske	16	1'09.2837	0.5486	0.0053	119.509
8	10	Felix Rosenqvist	Chip Ganassi Racing	14	1'09.2884	0.5533	0.0047	119.501
9	59	Max Chilton	Carlin	15	1'09.3113	0.5762	0.0229	119.461
10	27	Alexander Rossi	Andretti Autosport	12	1'09.3481	0.6130	0.0368	119.398
11	31	Patricio O'Ward	Carlin	13	1'09.4272	0.6921	0.0791	119.262
12	20	Ed Jones	Ed Carpenter Racing	12	1'09.4540	0.7189	0.0268	119.216
13	28	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	9	1'09.4794	0.7443	0.0254	119.172
14	60	Jack Harvey	Meyer Shank Racing	14	1'09.5282	0.7931	0.0488	119.088
15	12	Will Power	Team Penske	14	1'09.5959	0.8608	0.0677	118.973
16	4	Matheus Leist	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	13	1'09.6287	0.8936	0.0328	118.916
17	2	Josef Newgarden	Team Penske	13	1'09.7409	1.0058	0.1122	118.725
18	14	Tony Kanaan	A.J. Foyt Enterprises	12	1'09.8630	1.1279	0.1221	118.518
19	15	Graham Rahal	Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing	13	1'09.9723	1.2372	0.1093	118.333
20	98	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	10	1'10.0384	1.3033	0.0661	118.221
21	7	Marcus Ericsson	Schmidt Peterson Motorsports	7	1'10.1552	1.4201	0.1168	118.024
22	19	Santino Ferrucci	Dale Coyne Racing	11	1'10.5587	1.8236	0.4035	117.349
23	81	Ben Hanley	DragonSpeed	15	1'10.9123	2.1772	0.3536	116.764
24	26	Zach Veach	Andretti Autosport	2	1'11.0864	2.3513	0.1741	116.478