SPEEDWAY, Ind. — A warmer day brought some hot moments on the track in Day Three of practice for the 105th running of the Indianapolis 500.
The day started with an incident between Colton Herta and Scott McLaughlin, who got into each other in Turn Four shortly after practice started. The incident forced Herta high and he side-swiped the outside wall.
The reason for the dust-up was further up the track the three Rahal-Letterman-Lanigan cars slowed down for a planned picture on the front stretch. The team failed to inform IndyCar of this and thus the track was hot for the whole field.
Because of this, IndyCar says RLL’s cars in Graham Rahal, Takuma Sato, and Santino Ferrucci will have to sit out the first 30 minutes of practice on Friday.
“It turns out that going three-wide for a photo-op during IndyCar practice isn’t an ideal situation,” Herta told the IMS Radio Network. “Going a hundred miles an hour on the front straight while guys are going 220. Whoever is in charge of that at Rahal is a complete idiot.”
Herta’s crew was able to quickly make repairs and continue the day, in which Tony Kanaan, the 2013 Indy 500 winner, and IndyCar veteran, was able to turn in the top speed of the day at 225.341.
“It feels good,” Kanaan said. “Today has been the hottest day so far this week, so we’ve been to do a couple of things to kind of do the cookbook. You’re just trying to check the weather, what are we running in this type of weather, trying to guess when you’re going to qualify, and then try to guess what’s going to happen next Sunday when we take the green flag. We’re just working on racing setup.”
Practice was stopped briefly while safety crews had to clean up debris from a crash in which Santino Ferrucci slid into the wall in Turn Two. He’s was able to walk away from the wreck but was sent to the hospital to be further evaluated.
Ferrucci was back at the track later in the evening.
“All checked out from medical and I go through a final physical test tomorrow to see if I can get back in the car and drive,” Ferrucci said in a video on Twitter. “A little sore, but happy to be here and the guys are working to make sure our Hy-Vee Honda gets back on track and that it’s going to be quick.”
As the day progressed, some teams took the opportunity to run some qualifying practice. Ed Carpenter’s squad was one of those taking some qual sim, but he says it’s hard to gauge right now how fast they will really be on Saturday.
“We’ll be able to see what the no tow times say and try to have a guess but you never really know until the boost goes up anyway so, I think we’re in a good spot,” Carpenter said.
Drivers will get an extra boost of horsepower for Fast Friday which should make speed much faster than what we have been seeing so far this week. The extra speed will help drivers get their cars dialed in for qualifying coming up this weekend.
