IndyCar: Herta tops opening practice at Barber

No. 26 Andretti Autosport driver Colton Herta turned a lap of 1m06.5149s to top opening practice of the Honda GP of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park.

Herta just nipped defending race winner Alex Palou in the #10 Ganassi Honda by 0.05s

“I was really happy with how the car was,” Herta said. “We were one of the lucky ones that got to test here (recently), so we did a lot of stuff on that day to help us prepare for this weekend, and it showed. We came in here and rolled off the truck, and the car was really nice right away.”

Alexander Rossi and Romain Grosjean were 3rd and 4th giving Andretti Autosport 3 of the top-4 positions. Honda-powered cars were 1-2-3-4 today, but watch out for the Chevys come Saturday.

Scott McLaughlin rounded out the top-5 in the #3 Penske Chevy ahead of the #9 Ganassi Honda of Scott Dixon.

The No. 77 of Callum Ilott finished Practice 1 in the 8th spot, which is impressive given his team, Juncos Hollinger Racing, is in their first full-time IndyCar season

Points leader Josef Newgarden worked on race setup and pounded out a lot of laps with a heavy fuel load the entire session.  Rest assured that the 3-time winner here will be a factor to win and will qualify better tomorrow.

Dead last was the only female driver, Tatiana Calderon, the Brazilian still learning what it takes to wrestle the #11 AJ Foyt Chevy up the leaderboard.

Drivers noted that the track was unusually slippery on Friday, with a chance of rain Saturday, and more on Sunday, if the track gets wet, the track will be really slippery.

Practice 1 Results