Danish driver Allan Simonsen succumbed to injuries suffered from a third lap accident in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Simonsen's spun driver's side into the barrier at Tertre Rouge. The #95 Aston Martin being driven by Simonsen was the pole-sitting car in the GTE-Am class and was being shared with fellow Danes Kristian Poulsen and Christoffer Nygaard. The Simonsen's family asked the Aston Martin team to keep their remaining four cars on track in honor of Allan. Simonsen was competing in his seventh 24 Hour of Le Mans and had two podium finishes in the GT2 class.
In Iowa, Tony Kanaan was fastest in the only IndyCar practice session for the Iowa Corn Indy 250. Only four hundredths back was Will Power with Marco Andretti and Helio Castroneves making it a clean Chevrolet sweep of the top four. Scott Dixon was the fastest Honda in fifth.
Andretti Autosport's EJ Viso and James Hinchcliffe were sixth and seventh with James Jakes being an impressive eighth quickest. Ed Carpenter was ninth with Simon Pagenaud rounding out the top ten. Fellow Frenchman Sébastien Bourdais was just behind Pagenaud in eleventh ahead of French-Canadian Alex Tagliani, IndyCar's most recent winner Ryan Hunter-Reay in the thirteenth position and Frenchman Tristan Vautier in fourteenth. Josef Newgarden was fifteenth.
Two-time Iowa winner Dario Franchitti was sixteenth fastest ahead of former Ganassi teammate Graham Rahal and Oriol Serviá who returns after missing Milwaukee. Takuma Sato was nineteenth ahead of fellow Honda drivers Justin Wilson and Charlie Kimball. Simona de Silvestro and Sebastián Saavedra were twenty-second and twenty-third with Ana Beatriz bookending the field for Brazil.
A half second covered the top eighteen drivers with three quarters of a second covering the top twenty-two and 0.8849 seconds separating Kanaan and Beatriz.
Qualifying to set the starting line-ups for the heat races will be at 4:00 p.m. ET. Simona de Silvestro and her KV Racing Technology teammate Tony Kanaan will be the first two cars to set a time, followed by the Hondas of Scott Dixon, Josef Newgarden, Alex Tagliani, Graham Rahal and Justin Wilson. Other drivers to watch out for are Will Power going out eleventh, Marco Andretti twelfth, Helio Castroneves fifteenth and Ryan Hunter-Reay sixteenth. Ana Beatriz will be the final driver to qualify.
The fastest six from qualifying will automatically qualify for the final heat race and are guaranteed a top ten starting positions.
Eighth, tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, sixteenth, eighteenth, twentieth, twenty-second and twenty-fourth fastest from qualifying will comprise heat one with the top two finishers advancing to the final heat and the remaining seven drivers setting the even positions on the grid starting with twelfth.
Heat two will be comprised of seventh, ninth, eleventh, thirteenth, fifteenth, seventeenth, nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-third fastest from qualifying. The top two finishers from heat two advance to the final with the remaining seven drivers setting the odd positions on the grid starting with eleventh.
Heat races can be seen on IndyCar.com at 6:45 p.m. ET.
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