Houston Practice Led by Pagenaud

Simon Pagenaud ended Friday fastest overall with a time of 1:00.1415 minutes. The Frenchman was second in the first practice session Friday and was 0.5013 seconds ahead of Ryan Briscoe, who is making his first appearance at NRG Park. Briscoe was tenth in the first session Luca Filippi returned to IndyCar in third position Friday. The Italian was twelfth in the first session. Hélio Castroneves was fourth with Mikhail Aleshin bookending the top five for Schmidt Peterson Hamilton Motorsports. Castroneves and Aleshin were sixth and eleventh respectively in first practice.

James Hinchcliffe was the top Andretti Autosport driver in each practice. He was sixth in the second session and seventh in the first. Takuma Sato was seventh in second practice, down from fourth but he picked up 0.03 seconds between sessions. Scott Dixon was eighth in both session with Will Power was ninth in the second session but was first in the first session, fourth-tenths quicker. Ryan Hunter-Reay rounded out the top ten in the second session. The Texas-born driver picked it up from eighteenth in the first practice.

Graham Rahal was eleventh in the later session after being fifteenth in the morning. Carlos Muñoz was twelfth, the last driver within a second of Pagenaud in the second practice. Tony Kanaan was thirteenth. Kanaan was fifth in the first session. Marco Andretti was the slowest Andretti Autosport driver in fourteenth but picked up two-tenths from first practice. Charlie Kimball rounded out the top fifteen and was fourteenth in first practice.

Colombians Juan Pablo Montoya and Carlos Huertas were sixteenth and seventeenth in the second session. Josef Newgarden was eighteenth with two-time Houston winner Sébastien Bourdais in nineteenth. Jack Hawksworth rounded out the top twenty. Justin Wilson was twenty-first with Sebastián Saavedra and Mike Conway rounding out the field, 2.0777 back of Pagenaud.

Qualifying for race one will take place tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. ET.