A full set of 27 IndyCar drivers tackled the brand new street course around downtown Detroit, and it was Pato O’Ward that put in the fastest lap of the afternoon.
The Mexican driver used his well-known fast hands to wrestle his Arrow McLaren Chevy around the tricky course in a time of 1:03.0773.
With only nine turns, it was the tracks bumps and elevation changes that challenged the drivers the most.
Just behind on the timesheets was Scott Dixon, who completed his own lap in 0.0986 seconds slower in his Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.
A pair of Andretti Autosport drivers Alexander Rossi and Kyle Kirkwood took the third and fourth positions respectively. Alex Palou rounded out the top five.
The fastest rookie in the afternoon was Marcus Ericsson, who has built a reputation for being the best rookie in the field in the few races that have been run so far.
There were numerous red flags for drivers that went long on their braking zones and ended up needing help to get going from the runoff areas.
The Juncos Hollinger Racing rookie Agustin Canapino was the first to need assistance from the AMR safety crew in the turn 1 runoff.
Graham Rahal was next to get stranded. Then Ericsson, McLaughlin, Palou, and even O’Ward also brought out successive red flags throughout the session.
Only a couple actually hit the wall, and only Canapino had any damage to his car. But each still lost valuable time to learn the new street course.
There were numerous other incidents where drivers used the runoff but then were able to successfully spin their cars around, or reverse in the tight quarters, and get going again on their own.
The number of mistimed corner entries were mostly on account of the track surface, which is quite bumpy and built from many different surface types. Turns 3, 4 and 5 had the most activity, but nearly every corner saw some momentary troubles.
As the track builds up rubber over the weekend, there will likely be less instances of drivers running long. But it is something to keep an eye on throughout the weekend.
Drivers will have another practice session Saturday morning, then qualifying will take place at 1:15 PM Eastern time.
