Despite a guaranteed 75 minutes of track time, most drivers remained on pitlane after their installation laps since they were yearning for another set of tyres. The teams were granted their practice Firestone alternates for this session, rather than second practice, but the drivers wanted rubber laid down to be most representative of the expected track conditions in qualifying tomorrow.
On primary tyres, Romain Grosjean of Andretti Autosport was the first to crack the 1m47s barrier with a 1m46.9302s, but team-mates Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta eclipsed him by over two-tenths of a second.
Chip Ganassi Racing’s latest Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson delivered a 1m46.8876s to sneak into third and also shade Grosjean, while behind the ex-F1 drivers were the Team Penske drivers Will Power, Josef Newgarden and Scott McLaughlin, with defending Road America winner Alex Palou of Ganassi just ahead of the Kiwi.
As drivers started emerging on their red-walled tyres with little more than 20 minutes to go, Helio Castroneves spun his Meyer Shank Racing car down at Canada Corner and stalled, bringing out the red flag.
With 14 minutes to go, the green flag was waved once more, and Newgarden delivered a 1m46.1714s to go top, and lowered it next time by to 1m46.0594s. The second Meyer Shank car of Simon Pagenaud moved up to fourth and then third next time by.
However, as everyone was out on red-walled tyres, the leader board quickly changed, with Herta bursting to the top with a 1m45.7361s.
Then Rossi’s second flyer on the softer tyres pushed him 0.1334s ahead of Herta with a 1m45.6027s, while Power’s 1m45.8592s took him to third, but was still a quarter second off Rossi’s benchmark. Shortly after, Ericsson went fastest of the Ganassi drivers to move ahead of him.
Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist both got their Arrow McLaren SP into the top dozen, split by Devlin DeFrancesco. Team-mate Grosjean was left with an unrepresentative red-tyre time as he had been on his second flyer when the session was red-flagged for Castroneves.
In the battle for rookie of the year honours, current leader Christian Lundgaard was fastest for Rahal Letterman Lanigan in 13th, while Callum Ilott was an impressive 15th for Juncos Hollinger, as he made his return to action after skipping the Detroit GP to rest his broken hand.
Simona De Silvestro’s return to IndyCar road course action for the first time since 2015 might look disappointing at first, in that she was 3.15s off the ultimate pace. However, her team Paretta Autosport is in a technical alliance with Ed Carpenter Racing, and she was 1.8s off Conor Daly and only 1s behind Rinus VeeKay.
Second practice begins on Saturday at 9.45am local time.
IndyCar Road America - FP1 results
| Cla | Driver | Team | Laps | Time | Gap | Interval |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Alexander Rossi | Andretti Autosport | 13 | 1'45.6027 | ||
| 2 | Colton Herta | Andretti Autosport | 14 | 1'45.7361 | 0.1334 | 0.1334 |
| 3 |  Marcus Ericsson | Chip Ganassi Racing | 15 | 1'45.8050 | 0.2023 | 0.0689 |
| 4 |  Will Power | Team Penske | 14 | 1'45.8592 | 0.2565 | 0.0542 |
| 5 |  Alex Palou | Chip Ganassi Racing | 17 | 1'45.9140 | 0.3113 | 0.0548 |
| 6 |  Scott McLaughlin | Team Penske | 15 | 1'45.9316 | 0.3289 | 0.0176 |
| 7 | Scott Dixon | Chip Ganassi Racing | 15 | 1'46.0494 | 0.4467 | 0.1178 |
| 8 | Josef Newgarden | Team Penske | 14 | 1'46.0594 | 0.4567 | 0.0100 |
| 9 |  Simon Pagenaud | Meyer Shank Racing | 15 | 1'46.1108 | 0.5081 | 0.0514 |
| 10 |  Patricio O'Ward | Arrow McLaren SP | 14 | 1'46.3426 | 0.7399 | 0.2318 |
| 11 |  Devlin DeFrancesco | Andretti Autosport | 21 | 1'46.3834 | 0.7807 | 0.0408 |
| 12 | Felix Rosenqvist | Arrow McLaren SP | 13 | 1'46.5185 | 0.9158 | 0.1351 |
| 13 |  Christian Lundgaard | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | 20 | 1'46.5510 | 0.9483 | 0.0325 |
| 14 | Romain Grosjean | Andretti Autosport | 17 | 1'46.6454 | 1.0427 | 0.0944 |
| 15 |  Callum Ilott | Juncos Hollinger Racing | 16 | 1'46.7679 | 1.1652 | 0.1225 |
| 16 | Jack Harvey | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | 14 | 1'46.9495 | 1.3468 | 0.1816 |
| 17 | Conor Daly | Ed Carpenter Racing | 16 | 1'46.9676 | 1.3649 | 0.0181 |
| 18 | Graham Rahal | Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing | 13 | 1'46.9721 | 1.3694 | 0.0045 |
| 19 |  Takuma Sato | Dale Coyne Racing | 15 | 1'47.0431 | 1.4404 | 0.0710 |
| 20 | David Malukas | Dale Coyne Racing with HMD | 17 | 1'47.2820 | 1.6793 | 0.2389 |
| 21 | Kyle Kirkwood | A.J. Foyt Enterprises | 19 | 1'47.2981 | 1.6954 | 0.0161 |
| 22 |  Rinus van Kalmthout | Ed Carpenter Racing | 11 | 1'47.7352 | 2.1325 | 0.4371 |
| 23 | Jimmie Johnson | Chip Ganassi Racing | 22 | 1'47.7692 | 2.1665 | 0.0340 |
| 24 | Dalton Kellett | A.J. Foyt Enterprises | 16 | 1'48.0727 | 2.4700 | 0.3035 |
| 25 |  Helio Castroneves | Meyer Shank Racing | 12 | 1'48.1719 | 2.5692 | 0.0992 |
| 26 |  Tatiana Calderon | A.J. Foyt Enterprises | 13 | 1'48.6710 | 3.0683 | 0.4991 |
| 27 |  Simona de Silvestro | Paretta Autosport | 20 | 1'48.7490 | 3.1463 | 0.0780 |
| View full results | ||||||
