Chevrolet Takes Top Five Times in First Practice

For most of the first practice it appeared Chevrolet and Honda were equal on two mile Auto Club Speedway but at the end of the session the bow-tie brigade ended up taking the top five and eight of the top ten in first practice.

Will Power was fastest with a lap of 32.5955 seconds (220.889 MPH), seven tenths faster than the pole lap set by Marco Andretti last year. 2013 Indianapolis 500 winner Tony Kanaan was second as he aims to take his second leg of the Triple Crown and the $250,000 bonus that goes along with it. James Hinchcliffe was third with Power's Penske Racing teammates of AJ Allmendinger and Helio Castroneves rounding out the top five.

Scott Dixon kept his championship rival Castroneves right in his sights as Dixon was sixth quickest, only 0.0160 seconds back of the Brazilian. Marco Andretti was seventh ahead of Oriol Servià, James Jakes and Ryan Hunter-Reay rounded out the top ten.

Honda took the next five spots on the time chart. Justin Wilson was eleventh ahead of Alex Tagliani who is substituting for the injured Dario Franchitti this weekend. Josef Newgarden jumped up to thirteenth late in the session ahead of Takuma Sato who had an accident during the session that brought out a red flag. Simon Pagenaud was fifteenth.

Just behind Pagenaud was fellow Frenchman Sébastien Bourdais. Charlie Kimball was seventeenth ahead of Simona de Silvestro. 2013 IndyCar Rookie of the Year Tristan Vautier was nineteenth ahead of the defending Fontana race winner Ed Carpenter.

Graham Rahal was twenty-first ahead of Pippa Mann who had an early accident cut her practice session to only seven laps. She still clocked a lap faster than JR Hildebrand, Carlos Muñoz and Sebastián Saavedra.

Carlos Muñoz will race this weekend in place of EJ Viso who is "sick" with the "flu." There have been speculations that Viso is not at Fontana because his sponsor money was late arriving to the team and that Viso was not comfortable with the car during testing last month at the track. Last year, Viso struggled coming to grips with the car and retired from the Fontana race after only 65 laps.

IndyCar qualifying will take place at 5:15 p.m. ET and will air at 7:00 p.m. ET on NBCSN. IndyCar final practice will take place tonight at 9:05 p.m. ET.