Strength surpassed Palu in the first training session

Dale Coyne Racing with the novice HMD David Malyukas was the first driver in the 175s, before Team Penske‘s Willpower was first in the 176s in practice in round 15 of the 2022 season.

Devlin DeFrancesco then sent his Andretti Autosport car to 277 mph before Joseph Newgarden – a three-time winner at World Wide Technology Raceway – put everyone into perspective with an effort of 179.660 mph on his ninth lap.

Scott McLaughlinwho finished fourth here last year, closed in on his team-mate with a lap of 179.172mph, and at the time they were the only drivers to reach 195mph at the first turn.

But it was a driver who went “only” 194 into the first turn, Felix Rosenquist with Arrow McLaren SPwho took first place with 12 minutes to go with a first lap of 180mph on the weekend.

Shortly after that Graham Rahal finished second with an effort of 179.713 mph for Rahal Letterman Lanigan.

Pato O’Ward then completed an AMSP 1-2, just 0.0074sec/0.052mph slower than his team-mate.

Both were pushed down Alex PaluA qualifying simulation, a lap of 180.208mph before McLaughlin joined them at 180mph, followed by Will Power who went fastest at 180.539 with six minutes to go.

This remained the top speed of the session, although it ended with six drivers north of 180 mph and several drivers had their qualifying simulators ruined by traffic.

Chip Ganassi Racing will be happy with two cars in the top five at what has come to be known as the Penske track.

Autosport Andretti disappointing overall, although De Francesco, who tested alongside his fellow rookies last week, did himself a great credit by being fastest of the quartet in 11^thousandslightly ahead Colton Herta and Alexander Rossi.

Takuma Sato and Malyukas were ninth and 13th^thousand for Dale Coyne Racing, Malukas turned the most laps with 57.

Qualifying begins at 3:15 p.m. local (central) time.