Strength surpassed Palu in the first training session

Dale Coyne Racing with HMD-Honda rookie David Malukas was the top driver in the 175s, Team Penske-Chevrolet Will Power was first in the 176s, Devlin DeFrancesco sent his Andretti Autosport-Honda to 277 mph, and then Josef Newgarden, a three-time winner here – look at everyone with an effort of 179.660 mph on his ninth lap.

Scott McLaughlin, who finished fourth here last year, closed in on his teammate with a lap of 179.172 mph, and at that point they were the only drivers to reach 195 mph in the first turn.

But it was a driver who did “only” 194 at Turn 1, Arrow McLaren SP-Chevrolet’s Felix Rosenqvist, who took the top spot with 12 minutes to go with a 180mph first lap of the weekend. Graeme Rahal took second shortly after with a 179.713 mph effort behind Lanigan-Honda’s Rahal Letterman.

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

Both were edged out by Alex Palu’s qualifying simulation lap of 180.208mph, before McLaughlin joined them at 180mph, then Will Power 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 180mph, and several drivers had their qualifying simulators spoiled by traffic, so the results are not very convincing.

However, Chip Ganassi Racing-Honda will be pleased to have two cars in the top five at what has come to be regarded as the ‘Penske track’ and it is clear that the Arrow McLaren SP will have a chance of pole in qualifying this afternoon.

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

Takuma Sato and Malukas 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.