Helio Castroneves led both practice sessions for Team Penske as the Sonoma Raceway finale of the Verizon IndyCar Series season got underway on Friday.
The veteran Brazilian is not involved in the title battle but finished ahead of both of his championship challenging team-mates, with Castroneves edging out both Will Power and Simon Pagenaud as the team went 1-2-3 in second practice.
Penske decided not to run too many laps in the first session, with Castroneves running only four, but he was still able to put his #3 machine to the top of the time sheets with a lap of 1:17.3298, which was 0.1313 seconds faster than Marco Andretti of Andretti Autosport.
Graham Rahal was third for Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing ahead of Jack Hawksworth of AJ Foyt Racing, while Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay completed the top five in a relatively quiet and trouble free session.
Championship leader Pagenaud only completed five laps and finished tenth fastest, while Power, his only rival for the title, ran four laps and was down in an unrepresentative seventeenth.
The second session saw Penske put in more laps, and it was Castroneves who once again hit the front with a best time of 1:16.6678, with Power and Pagenaud second and third, 0.0394 and 0.3079 seconds down respectively.
Hunter-Reay ended this session in fourth, while Alexander Rossi completed the top five for Andretti Herta Autosport despite stopping on track with a suspected engine issue with just two minutes remaining on the clock.
It was the second red flag of the session after Dale Coyne Racing’s Conor Daly also suffered an engine issue, which will require a change before Saturday’s running. The American driver finished at the back of the field in both sessions.
Sonoma Raceway Free Practice 1 Result
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Sonoma Raceway Free Practice 2 Result
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