Andretti Autosport continued to control the practice timesheets at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, on the fourth day of a full week of practice ahead of Saturday’s Pole Day qualifying for the 97th running of the Indy 500.
Today it was James Hinchcliffe’s turn to end up on top with a lap of 224.210mph (40.1410s), a tenth faster than Panther’s JR Hildebrand; Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay and EJ Viso were also in the top six and the rookie member of the Andretti line-up Carlos Munoz continued to run strongly for the squad in eighth. The strongly team-based nature of the Andretti quintet was emphasised by Hinchcliffe’s time actually being set in Marco Andretti’s #25 car rather than his own #27 GoDaddy.com car, as the colleagues tested out each others settings to cross-pollinate ideas.
“Marco is pretty angry with me now. Not only did I rock a big tow, which he is famous for, but I did it in his car!” laughed Hinchcliffe afterwards. “It’s good to be up there, but at the end of the day, those numbers don’t mean a lot right now. It’s about the work you do on the race car and making sure the #27 GoDaddy car is going to be good not only on one lap, but over 200.”
“We did a couple of long runs with the rest of the Andretti Autosport guys and we are still finding new answers every time we go on a run together,” said EJ Viso of the Andretti approach to this week’s preparations for the May 26 greatest spectacle in motorsports. “Today was a little bit hotter than the other days, and the weather predictions say that race day is going to be even a bit hotter than today, so I think the running that we did today was pretty productive to gather some data.” Viso was among the drivers to have run 2000 miles with his engine so far this season in testing and races, which means he can now swap out the old one and get a new Chevrolet to enhance their remaining practice times.
It was another day free of incident – just three yellows for debris and two brief track inspections during the day – with the track temperatures 20 degrees higher at 130F over yesterday’s levels which helped the teams get their race set-ups up to scratch during the six hour session.
See pictures from the practice sessions so far.
Practice 4 times
1. #25 James Hinchcliffe (C) 224.210mph 40.1410s Leader (26 laps)
2. #4 JR Hildebrand (C) 223.652mph 40.2411s + 0.1001s (67 laps)
3. #25 Marco Andretti (C) 223.570mph 40.2558s + 0.1148s (58 laps)
4. #3 Helio Castroneves (C) 223.556mph 40.2584s + 0.1174s (71 laps)
5. #1 Ryan Hunter-Reay (C) 223.332mph 40.2987s + 0.1577s (84 laps)
6. #5 EJ Viso (C) 223.138mph 40.3337s + 0.1927s (134 laps)
7. #21 Josef Newgarden (H) 223.123mph 40.3365s + 0.1955s (73 laps)
8. #26 Carlos Munoz * (C) 223.110mph 40.3389s + 0.1979s (90 laps)
9. #22 Oriol Servia (C) 222.093mph 40.5236s + 0.3826s (59 laps)
10. #2 AJ Allmendinger * (C) 222.005mph 40.5397s + 0.3987s (76 laps)
11. #27 Marco Andretti (C) 221.972mph 40.5456s + 0.4046s (22 laps)
12. #60 Townsend Bell (C) 221.898mph 40.5592s + 0.4182s (56 laps)
13. #27 James Hinchcliffe (C) 221.781mph 40.5806s + 0.4396s (52 laps)
14. #12 Will Power (C) 221.654mph 40.6038s + 0.4628s (52 laps)
15. #6 Sebastian Saavedra (C) 221.119mph 40.7021s + 0.5611s (89 laps)
16. #7 Sebastien Bourdais (C) 221.088mph 40.7077s + 0.5667s (75 laps)
17. #78 Simona De Silvestro (C) 220.963mph 40.7308s + 0.5898s (122 laps)
18. #20 Ed Carpenter (C) 220.897mph 40.7429s + 0.6019s (50 laps)
19. #83 Charlie Kimball (H) 220.722mph 40.7753s + 0.6343s (72 laps)
20. #11 Tony Kanaan (C) 220.645mph 40.7895s + 0.6485s (79 laps)
21. #77 Simon Pagenaud (H) 220.591mph 40.7995s + 0.6585s (97 laps)
22. #10 Dario Franchitti (H) 220.502mph 40.8159s + 0.6749s (65 laps)
23. #8 Ryan Briscoe (H) 220.100mph 40.8905s + 0.7495s (38 laps)
24. #55 Tristan Vautier * (H) 220.017mph 40.9060s + 0.7650s (55 laps)
25. #9 Scott Dixon (H) 219.848mph 40.9373s + 0.7963s (77 laps)
26. #41 Conor Daly * (H) 219.688mph 40.9672s + 0.8262s (94 laps)
27. #63 Pippa Mann (H) 219.588mph 40.9859s + 0.8449s (24 laps)
28. #19 Justin Wilson (H) 219.423mph 41.0166s + 0.8756s (54 laps)
29. #16T James Jakes (H) 219.191mph 41.0601s + 0.9191s (35 laps)
30. #18 Ana Beatriz (H) 218.998mph 41.0962s + 0.9552s (45 laps)
31. #98 Alex Tagliani (H) 218.213mph 41.2442s + 1.1032s (112 laps)
32. #17 Michel Jourdain Jr (H) 217.118mph 41.4522s + 1.3112s (57 laps)
33. #15T Graham Rahal (H) 216.633mph 41.5450s + 1.4040s (46 laps)
34. #14 Takuma Sato (H) 216.616mph 41.5482s + 1.4072s (20 laps)
* Denotes Rookie
Total Laps: 2226
