Helio Castroneves reversed the fortunes from the first practice session around the streets of Detroit to lead Graham Rahal in second practice on Friday.
After seeing Rahal lead earlier in the day, Castroneves hit the front with a lap of 1:15.1511s, with the Team Penske driver 0.2008 seconds clear of the Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver.
Third fastest was Alexander Rossi, but the American completed only three laps of the Belle Isle track before hitting the wall at turn nine. The incident for the Andretti Herta Autosport driver brought out the red flags, and caused the session to be suspended for eight minutes while the clean up operation concluded.
Simon Pagenaud was fourth quickest for Team Penske, 0.3066 seconds down on his team-mate, while Mikhail Aleshin ended up fifth for Schmidt Peterson Motorsport, a further 0.0805 seconds down.
Last weekend’s Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato ended sixth for Andretti Autosport ahead of JR Hildebrand of Ed Carpenter Racing and Will Power of Team Penske, while Ryan Hunter-Reay was ninth for Andretti Autosport despite a spin a turn eleven shortly after the restart following Rossi’s crash.
Luckily for the former series champion, he avoided contact with the wall and was able to continue, while Tony Kanaan completed the top ten for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Esteban Gutierrez continued his rookie weekend for Dale Coyne Racing but was the slowest of the runners in the session, 3.3902 seconds off the pace of Castroneves and 0.9318 seconds down on team-mate Ed Jones, while in between the team-mates was Scott Dixon, who only completed nine laps for Chip Ganassi Racing.
Belle Isle Park Free Practice 2 Result
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