Marco Andretti leads Honda sweep in opening IndyCar practice
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| Marco Andretti |
After a winter of intense training, Marco Andretti came out swinging by turning the fastest lap of 1m03.756s in opening practice for the Firestone St. Petersburg Grand Prix street race. Andretti led a Honda 1-2-3-4 as Honda appears to have caught Chevy in the offseason, at least so far.
Tony Kanaan came within a whisker of Andretti with a time of 1m03.845s with his Ganassi teammate right behind in third.
James Hinchcliffe and Simon Pagenaud rounded out the top-5.
The Penske team struggled a bit with brake issues as Will Power spun and hit the wall under hard braking and Josef Newgarden did a half-spin under hard braking but continued.
Results
| P | No | Name | FTime | Diff | Gap | FL | Laps | FSpeed | Engine |
| 1 | 27 | Marco Andretti | 1:03.756 | 0.0000 | 0.0000 | 6 | 16 | 101.638 | Honda |
| 2 | 10 | Tony Kanaan | 1:03.845 | 0.0891 | 0.0891 | 4 | 20 | 101.496 | Honda |
| 3 | 9 | Scott Dixon | 1:03.880 | 0.1239 | 0.0348 | 9 | 16 | 101.441 | Honda |
| 4 | 5 | James Hinchcliffe | 1:04.151 | 0.3947 | 0.2708 | 12 | 13 | 101.012 | Honda |
| 5 | 1 | Simon Pagenaud | 1:04.213 | 0.4572 | 0.0625 | 15 | 15 | 100.914 | Chevy |
| 6 | 15 | Graham Rahal | 1:04.319 | 0.5631 | 0.1059 | 20 | 20 | 100.748 | Honda |
| 7 | 3 | Helio Castroneves | 1:04.349 | 0.5929 | 0.0298 | 7 | 16 | 100.701 | Chevy |
| 8 | 83 | Charlie Kimball | 1:04.407 | 0.6512 | 0.0583 | 17 | 20 | 100.610 | Honda |
| 9 | 28 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 1:04.412 | 0.6559 | 0.0047 | 12 | 16 | 100.603 | Honda |
| 10 | 8 | Max Chilton | 1:04.538 | 0.7820 | 0.1261 | 20 | 21 | 100.406 | Honda |
| 11 | 12 | Will Power | 1:04.551 | 0.7954 | 0.0134 | 3 | 18 | 100.385 | Chevy |
| 12 | 98 | Alexander Rossi | 1:04.627 | 0.8711 | 0.0757 | 17 | 17 | 100.268 | Honda |
| 13 | 18 | Sebastien Bourdais | 1:04.690 | 0.9341 | 0.0630 | 16 | 16 | 100.170 | Honda |
| 14 | 20 | Spencer Pigot | 1:04.829 | 1.0731 | 0.1390 | 13 | 16 | 99.955 | Chevy |
| 15 | 2 | Josef Newgarden | 1:04.850 | 1.0941 | 0.0210 | 9 | 13 | 99.923 | Chevy |
| 16 | 26 | Takuma Sato | 1:04.854 | 1.0977 | 0.0036 | 5 | 15 | 99.917 | Honda |
| 17 | 7 | Mikhail Aleshin | 1:04.960 | 1.2046 | 0.1069 | 14 | 17 | 99.753 | Honda |
| 18 | 19 | Ed Jones | 1:05.221 | 1.4654 | 0.2608 | 20 | 20 | 99.354 | Honda |
| 19 | 14 | Carlos Munoz | 1:05.429 | 1.6730 | 0.2076 | 6 | 14 | 99.039 | Chevy |
| 20 | 21 | JR Hildebrand | 1:05.580 | 1.8238 | 0.1508 | 5 | 15 | 98.811 | Chevy |
| 21 | 4 | Conor Daly | 1:05.593 | 1.8369 | 0.0131 | 6 | 8 | 98.791 | Chevy |