By David Morgan, Associate Editor
ARLINGTON, Texas – Saturday morning in Arlington brought increased speeds as the NTT IndyCar Series field set about figuring out the demanding street course for the second day of the inaugural Java House Grand Prix of Arlington Grand Prix weekend.
When all was said and done, it was Kyle Kirkwood in his No. 27 Andretti Global Honda that set the pace with a blistering lap of 1 minute, 33.1409 seconds around the around the 2.73-mile, 14-turn street course.
Kirkwood would be joined at the top of the overall time sheet by Alex Palou, Marcus Armstrong, Will Power, Marcus Ericsson, David Malukas, Scott McLaughlin, Pato O’Ward, Alexander Rossi, and Christian Lundgaard.
By the time all was said and done, the top-14 cars had all posted faster times that McLaughlin’s fast time in opening practice on Friday.
Kirkwood opened the session by leading the all-cars portion of practice before Palou went faster in Group 1, but when it was time for Group 2 to go out, Kirkwood was back on top with his fast time.
The session was also not without its incidents, starting with a tangle between Scott Dixon and Power in the tight, winding horseshoe section of the track in the opening minutes when Dixon spun and Power rounded the corner to find Dixon’s car sitting broadside on the track. With no time to stop completely, Power would skid into Dixon.
Ultimately, it was no harm, no foul as both were able to continue on.
The most impactful incident of practice came with roughly three and a half minutes remaining when Josef Newgarden tagged the wall in Turn 2, causing damage to the left front of his No. 2 Team Penske Chevrolet.
https://twitter.com/IndyCar/status/2032825889528909878
“I should have just nosed it straight in and only broke the nose cone, probably could have put me back, but broke the left front,” said Newgarden. “It was very slow, but yeah, just had a rear lock-up and ran out of room.”
With the quick turnaround between practice and qualifying, the decision was made for Newgarden to go to a backup car after the incident.
Following the all-cars session, the first group had their session delayed when a catering crew wandered out on track, bringing out the red flag immediately for safety crews to double check and make sure all essential parties were in the proper place before sending cars back out on track.
Once back to green, those running into issues would include Rossi, who had a big lock-up on the brakes, along with Graham Rahal making slight contact with the wall, and Armstrong going for a spin with 2:23 remaining in the session after he had just gone second fastest in the group.
“It wasn’t my finest moment, I’ll give you that,” Armstrong said afterwards. “It’s one of those things where this is the time to push, you know? If there’s a time to make a silly mistake like that, it’s now. And that’s OK.
“Back in the olden days when I was a young lad, they used to encourage us to crash because we’d go and find the limit. I didn’t go as far as crashing, but at least we found the limit.”
Qualifying to set the field for the Grand Prix of Arlington will start at 2:30 pm ET, televised on FOX Sports 1.
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