IndyCar St. Petersburg: Felix Rosenqvist paces opening practice

Joey Barnes

Mar 8, 2024, 9:32 PM

Upd:

Mar 9, 2024, 1:26 AM

Running the softer alternate tires, the Swede dropped a stout lap of 1m00.3390s around the 1.8-mile, 14-turn temporary street circuit to go top of the leaderboard in the final segment of the session in Friday’s practice.

The performance by Rosenqvist, who made the switch from Arrow McLaren to MSR over the offseason, was a sizable 0.4722s ahead of former team-mate Pato O’Ward.

Deployed on a trial basis in St. Petersburg, the field was split into two groups for the opening 75-minute practice. The format featured a 20-minute “All Cars” session to begin the session, then following that, each group – split by odd and even numbered pit boxes – received two 10-minute segments on an alternating basis. Similar to qualifying, the clock for segment one and two stopped for the first red flag condition of each practice segment.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s Marcus Armstrong ended up third, 0.4792s behind.

Will Power, who was running in the penultimate segment opposite of Rosenqvist, O’Ward and Armstrong, put his No. 12 Team Penske Chevrolet in fourth (+0.5019s).

Rinus Veekay also presented an early encouraging showing in the No. 21 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet in fifth (+0.5458s). Scott McLaughlin (Team Penske), Romain Grosjean (Juncos Hollinger Racing) and Colton Herta (Andretti Global) completed spots sixth to eighth.

Reigning and two-time IndyCar Series champion Alex Palou put his No. 10 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda in ninth.

Callum Ilott, substituting for the injured David Malukas, managed to establish the No. 6 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet in 10th. There were three red flags throughout the entirety of the practice, all of which came in Turn 10.

The first incident came with roughly seven minutes remaining during the second segment when Chip Ganassi Racing rookie Kyffin Simpson brought out the red flag after locking up and ending up stranded in the runoff. Less than five minutes later, Pietro Fittipaldi (Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing) endured a similar fate in Turn 10 to bring out a second red flag.

The last red flag came out for Santino Ferrucci for also blowing the corner in the final two minutes of practice, which was able to resume and finish under green conditions moments later.