 |
| Patricio O'Ward showed the speed on Friday from Gateway |
Patricio O'Ward topped the one and only practice session ahead of the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 doubleheader at Gateway on Friday. O'Ward's best lap from the session was at 24.7890 seconds, 181.532 MPH. He was 0.0783 seconds ahead of Will Power.
O'Ward became the third Mexican driver to win Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year, joining Josele Garza and Bernard Jourdain. Not including rookie winners, the last Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year to win a race later that season was Ryan Hunter-Reay in 2008. Hunter-Reay won at Watkins Glen five races after earning Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year honors with a sixth-place finish. O'Ward was sixth in this year's Indianapolis 500.
This will be O'Ward's 16th career start. The last driver to have a first career victory come in a 16th career start was Uncle Jacques Villeneuve at Road America on August 4, 1985. Other notable drivers to pick up their first career victory in their 16th career start are Tommy Milton, Ted Horn, Bill Holland, Troy Ruttman, Mario Andretti, Gordon Johncock, Mark Donohue, Danny Ongais and Emerson Fittipaldi. No driver has ever picked up a first career victory at Gateway.
Power sits on 58 pole positions, nine off of Mario Andretti's all-time record. Gateway could become the 14th track where Power has multiple pole positions. He has started no worse than fourth in his three Gateway starts. Power has finished on the podium in the eighth races of the season the last four years. All those were at Belle Isle, but he had finishes of first, third, second and third.
Scott Dixon was third in practice, 0.0974 off O'Ward. Dixon's runner-up finish in the Indianapolis 500 was his 120th podium finish in his IndyCar career, surpassing A.J. Foyt for second all-time. Dixon is 24 podium finishes behind Mario Andretti's all-time record of 144 podium finishes. This is the fourth consecutive season Dixon has had at least five podium finishes and he has had at least five podium finishes in 12 of his last 15 seasons. Dixon started on pole position for the 2018 Gateway race after qualifying was rained out. He has never started worse than eighth at Gateway.
Conor Daly is back with Carlin after driving a third car for Ed Carpenter Racing at the Indianapolis 500 and Daly was fourth, 0.1305 seconds off the top time in practice. Daly has finished fifth and sixth in his two Gateway starts. Daly has 14 top ten finishes in his career. Nine of those 14 top ten finishes came at Belle Isle, Texas, Mid-Ohio and Gateway. Belle Isle is the track where Daly has the most top ten finishes with three.
Takuma Sato returns to Gateway and he was fifth quickest in practice, 0.1508 seconds back. Sato's victory at Indianapolis last week made the 2.5-mile oval Sato's first track he has won at multiple times. No driver has multiple victories at Gateway. Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing has not won consecutive races since Graham Rahal swept the Belle Isle doubleheader. It has not won consecutive oval races since 2001 when Kenny Bräck won at Chicago Motor Speedway and Lausitz. That Lausitz victory is one of two 1-2 finishes for RLLR, as Max Papis was second. The other was Kansas 2004 with Buddy Rice winning ahead of Vitor Meira.
Jack Harvey's strong run on ovals continue as Harvey was sixth in practice, 0.1769 seconds slower than O'Ward. After starting 2020 with four consecutive finishes outside the top fifteen, Harvey has three consecutive top ten finishes. Harvey had four top ten finishes over his ten starts in 2019. He has started in the top ten five times this year, including starting ninth and sixth at Iowa last month
Álex Palou has started seventh in the last two races and Palou was seventh in practice, 0.1858 seconds off the top time. Despite those seventh-place starting positions, Palou has finished off the lead lap in the last three races. On all three occasions Palou has started in the top ten, he has finished worse than his starting position.
Car #8 was eighth in practice, as Marcus Ericsson laid down a lap at 24.9782 seconds. Ericsson had his first retirement of the season with his accident in the Indianapolis 500 after only 24 laps. He had three retirements for the entirety of 2019, but one of those was a radiator puncture and the another was after he was collateral damage at the start of Mid-Ohio when Takuma Sato got into James Hinchcliffe, knocking Hinchcliffe into Ericsson. The only retirement in 2019 to fall squarely on Ericsson's shoulders was his spin at the Grand Prix of Indianapolis.
Rinus VeeKay looked strong again in ninth at 24.9857 seconds. VeeKay has an average finish of 19.75 on ovals this season. He has retired from two of those races and he has finished off the lead lap in the other two. Prior to qualifying fourth for the Indianapolis 500, VeeKay's best starting position was 13th at Iowa.
Colton Herta rounded out the top ten but he was the first driver in the 25-second bracket at 25.023 seconds. Herta has a trend of matching his finishes in doubleheader weekends. In his three doubleheader weekends, Herta had a pair of 12ths at Belle Isle last year, he had a pair of fifths at Road America last month and he had a pair of 19ths at Iowa.
Alexander Rossi was 0.1304 seconds off his Andretti Autosport teammate in 11th. Through seven races, Rossi has one top five finish and three top ten finishes. Those are tied for worst in each category since his rookie season in 2016. The last two seasons saw Rossi with a victory, four podium finishes and six top five finishes through the first seven races of 2018 and a victory, three podium finishes and five top five finishes through the first seven races of 2019.
Josef Newgarden was a surprising 12th in practice. Newgarden started 13th at Indianapolis and he has not started outside the top ten in consecutive races since the 2018 Belle Isle doubleheader. He is looking to extend his streak of consecutive top five finishes to four races. Every time Newgarden has had four consecutive top five finishes in a season, he has gone on to win the championship. In 2017, he won at Toronto and Mid-Ohio, finished second at Pocono and won at Gateway. Last year, he started the season with a victory at St. Petersburg, second at Austin, fourth at Barber and second at Long Beach. Later that season, he won Texas, finished third at Road America, fourth at Toronto and first at Iowa.
Oliver Askew was 13th in practice, 0.3854 seconds off his Arrow McLaren SP teammate. Askew's accident at Indianapolis dropped him from 12th in the championship to 16th. He had finished in the top ten of the first three oval races of 2020 with an average finish of sixth. He has led laps in the last two races.
Tony Kanaan slotted into 14th in the #14 Big Machine Vodka Chevrolet. At the end of the Gateway weekend, Tony Kanaan could have 383 starts, good enough for second all-time, 24 behind Mario Andretti's all-time record. He currently ranks tied for 27th on victories with Ralph Mulford and Danny Sullivan on 17, tied 20th on pole positions with Juan Pablo Montoya on 15, 11th in laps led with 4,071, tied for 11th in podium finishes with Will Power on 78 and eighth all-time in top five finishes with 133.
Felix Rosenqvist was the final driver within a half-second of O'Ward in 15th. After winning at Road America, Rosenqvist jumped from 18th to eighth in the championship. Despite having an average finish of 13.667 over the last three races with his best finish being 12th, Rosenqvist has only dropped to tenth in the championship. He has started in the top ten of six races this season, but his best starting position is only seventh.
Zach Veach is 16th in the championship and Veach was 16th in practice. Since starting fifth and finishing fourth in the Texas season opener, Veach's average starting position is 20th and his average finishing position is 17.333. He has not started better than 17th in the last six races. Veach did lead 14 laps last week in the Indianapolis 500, the most laps he has led in a single race. His first career laps led came at Gateway in 2018 when he led two laps.
Marco Andretti was 17th in practice. Andretti has finished 14th, 14th and tenth in his three Gateway starts. Andretti has not had a top five finish in the last 24 races. Andretti has finished on the lead lap in his last two starts after opening 2020 with three lapped finished and two retirements.
Simon Pagenaud was the slowest Penske driver in 18th. Pagenaud has started outside the top twenty in the last four races and he has started outside the top fifteen in six consecutive races. Pagenaud's victory from 23rd in the first Iowa race tied Scott Dixon's first career victory at Nazareth for the ninth worst starting position for a race winner in IndyCar history.
Ryan Hunter-Reay was 19th in practice, odd considering Hunter-Reay has the second best average starting position this year at 6.3, behind only Josef Newgarden. Hunter-Reay has started in the top five in five of seven races and in the other two races he started 12th. Hunter-Reay's average finish is 13.6, 11th best of the full-time drivers.
Ed Carpenter put the #20 Air Force Chevrolet 20th in practice. Carpenter was fifth in the season opener at Texas. Carpenter has not had multiple top five finishes in a season since 2014. He has finished outside the top twenty in his last two starts. The last time he had three consecutive finishes outside the top twenty was 2015 when he had finishes of 30th at Indianapolis and a pair of 22nd-place finishes at Texas and Fontana.
Charlie Kimball and Graham Rahal were 21st and 22nd. Kimball has not had a top five finish on an oval since fifth at Indianapolis in 2016. Kimball has not qualified in the top ten once this season. He has not started in the top ten on an oval since he started third at Pocono in 2017. Rahal has finished third in his last two starts. This is the sixth time he has had consecutive podium finishes in his IndyCar career. Rahal has never had three consecutive podium finishes in his career. The last time he had three consecutive top five finishes was in 2017 when he swept the Belle Isle doubleheader and finished fourth at Texas.
Santino Ferrucci had a mechanical issue limit him to 40 laps of practice. Ferrucci was still only 1.0918 seconds off O'Ward's top time despite the mechanical problem. Ferrucci led a race-high 97 laps last year at Gateway on his way to finishing fourth. Last week, Ferrucci led one lap at Indianapolis. It was the fourth race he has led in his IndyCar career.
Qualifying will take place at noon ET. Like Iowa, this qualifying format will see each car run two laps. The first lap will set the grid for race one later this afternoon. The second lap will set the grid for Sunday's race.
NBCSN's coverage of the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 Race 1 begins at 3:00 p.m. ET with green flag scheduled for 3:45 p.m. ET. The race is scheduled for 200 laps.
