SPEEDWAY, Ind. — The rain stayed away while temperatures climbed higher on Day Two of practice for the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500 on Wednesday.
It was once again a day of lots of pack-running and figuring out race day set-ups for most of the drivers who turned over 3,200 laps individual laps.
Scott Dixon was the quickest on the day with a speed of 226.829 mph, though he is careful to say that the overall speeds on the day don’t carry much weight yet.
“The big times don’t really mean much, you just get lucky and throw them up,” Dixon said. “But I think our cars definitely have good speed, all four (Ganassi cars) in the top eight there.”
Despite being fastest on the day, Dixon says his car did not feel as good as Tuesday’s practice.
“Yesterday felt more comfortable than today, to be honest,” he added. “I think track conditions were certainly different. We’ve got a long list of stuff to work through. We’ll try and debrief and see what the others (teammates) got up to.”
Ed Carpenter and Conor Daly were second and third fastest on the day. Carpenter and Dixon were both surprised afterward to find out that several teams took some qualifying sim runs.
Juan Pablo Montoya was among those to take a qualifying run averaging 218.302 over four-laps. Granted, that was without the planned boost in horsepower that each driver will get on Friday.
Rookie RC Enerson was able to finish his rookie orientation program to start the day in a special session that started at 11:00 a.m. Enerson’s session went 15 minutes long, so the free practice session scheduled for immediately afterward was allowed to go until 6:15.
Drivers will likely begin trimming cars out in preparation for qualifying on when practice resumes on Thursday at 12:00 p.m.
