By Austin Lawton, Staff Writer
The penultimate practice for the 109th Indianapolis 500 wrapped on Monday afternoon with Alex Palou fastest at 226.765 mph.
The Spaniard in the No.10 DHL Honda for Chip Ganassi Racing ran 53 laps on a day filled with race simulation. Palou will start sixth on Sunday for the “500” as he looks to get his first oval win.
Following Palou in the top five was four-time “500” winner Helio Castroneves (226.441 mph) in the No.06 Cliffs Honda for Meyer Shank Racing, Takuma Sato (226.087 mph), who starts second on Sunday in the No.75 Amada Honda for Rahal Letterman-Lanigan Racing and the Dreyer and Reinbold Racing/Cusick Motorsports duo of Jack Harvey (226.048 mph) in the No.24 and Ryan Hunter-Reay (225.969 mph) in the No.23 ended the day in fourth and fifth, respectively.
“It was decent,” Castroneves said at the end of the day. “We had some stuff that we thought is going to be different, gearbox… not gearbox but the numbers we’ve chosen unfortunately was not the right one. We have to lose a little bit of time on this to fix it. Once we fixed it, no problem, the car seemed to be handling well. Other than that we just continue to pile in laps, tweaking here and there, getting better.”
After a caution and wrecked-filled weekend, only one caution flag for a race car was flown for Christian Rasmussen. The driver of the No.21 Splenda Chevrolet for Ed Carpenter Racing spun while in a pack exiting Turn Two. The Dane suffered minimal damage, similar to the wreck he experienced on Thursday May 15 in practice. Rasmussen was released from the medical center without injury and ended the day ninth on the charts at 225.247 mph.
Honda took the top three spots on the charts on Monday but it was Chevorlet who took fourth through 12th. The bowtie crew looks to be good in race running with rookie polesitter Robert Shwartzman running strong when leading a group of cars.
Shwartzman and the No.83 Prema crew would mainly focus on the little nuances such as pit stops, pit entry and pit exit, that are needed to run the 500 mile race. Both driver and crew are starting their first “500” and any practice before raceday, is good practice.
Will Power and Josef Newgarden completed the most laps on Monday at 88 and 87, respectively. Both Team Penske drivers are starting at the rear of the field on Sunday after it was found that the crews had altered the attenuator, a spec part that is a safety device meant to absorb crash damage.
Power put the No.12 Verizon Chevrolet in seventh (225.631 mph) at the end of the day with Newgarden in the No.2 Shell Chevorlet in eighth (225.597 mph).
The next practice session is just four days away on Friday May 25 for Carb Day. The teams will get one, last two-hour session to fine tune their cars for Sunday’s sold-out Indy 500.