Herta tops second practice as Dixon crashes

Two-time St. Petersburg winner Josef Newgarden became the first driver of the session to make contact with the wall, bending the rear toelink of his Team Penske car at the exit of Turn 10.

Meanwhile, the Chip Ganassi Racing team was looking strong in the early minutes of the session, with Indy 500 winner Marcus Ericsson on top with a 1m01.001s, but 15 minutes in, it was the Arrow McLarens of Pato O’Ward and Felix Rosenqvist in first and third, O’Ward being the first driver down into the 60-second bracket, with a 1m00.9306s.

The red flag came out five minutes later when Romain Grosjean spun his Andretti Autosport car into the grass on the outside of the final turn.

When action resumed, Rosenqvist had a nasty snap toward the Turn 3 wall that he rescued, but Devlin DeFrancesco of Andretti Autosport was less lucky, making hard contact with the Turn 3 exit wall with both his front and rear left-side wheels.

He was able to limp back to the pits, but with 24 minutes remaining Dale Coyne Racing’s rookie Sting Ray Robb clipped the apex wall of Turn 3 which sent him into the outside wall and with little steering he bounced back across the track to hit the inside wall.

Rosenqvist was the first driver to run Firestone’s new alternate tyres, now green side-walled to mark the fact that they are constructed with rubber sourced from the guayule shrub. He inevitably jumped to the top, but was swiftly displaced by Grosjean who delivered a 1m00.805s on the primary compound tyres.

McLaughlin, St. Petersburg race-winner in 2022, displaced Grosjean, but then Andretti Autosport’s Kyle Kirkwood strapped on the alternate tyres to deliver a 1m00.5701s, a mark that Rinus VeeKay further lowered for Ed Carpenter Racing. His 1m00.4601s, also set on alternates, was the first lap of the weekend to surpass the 107mph barrier.

With under 15 minutes left, Alex Palou sprung into the top three with the softer rubber, but then McLaughlin delivered a 1m00.2511s, and 2021 St. Petersburg winner Herta shaved 0.1732s from that to go top.

The caveat is that heavy traffic compromised several efforts on alternate tyres, including those of Ericsson and O’Ward, while yesterday’s pacesetter Dixon half-spinning hard into the tyre wall at the exit of Turn 4 interrupted Newgarden’s flyer on ‘greens’.

There was barely enough time for anyone to make a final qualifying simulation when the session resumed, and there were no improvements at the top of the times due to heavy traffic.

IndyCar St. Petersburg – FP2 results