Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
In the second session of the day for the Verizon IndyCar Series test at Phoenix International Raceway, Marco Andretti would top the charts with a lap of 19.6038 seconds.
Andretti is hoping to have a better season this year that sees him return to victory lane as he hasn’t won a race since 2011 while finishing ninth in points the past two years.
“I love this place. I always have. I even drove the old configuration back when I started, which makes me feel pretty old. That was like 2005,” the driver of the No. 27 Andretti Autosport Honda said. “Yeah, I mean, a lot of fun so far. Really it’s a place that makes you work. In the middle of turn one in particular it gets pretty heavy.”
Scott Dixon was second quickest in his Chevrolet for Chip Ganassi Racing, ahead of Ed Carpenter, James Hinchcliffe and Josef Newgarden. For Hinchcliffe, this marks his first official group test session since his accident last year at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“It feels like the first day in school,” he said. “We traveled to some races in the second half of the year. I still felt like a little bit of an outsider because I wasn’t doing my job. To now be back here and be back in the car with everybody, it’s great to see all those familiar faces again.
“I’ve been driving the car. Obviously testing and driving IndyCar is phenomenal always, but it’s competition that you really miss after a while. It’s nice to be back here with a bunch of cars on track and get sort of those competitive juices flowing again.”
While Honda took four of the top-five spots in the first practice, Chevrolet would take three of the top-five spots this session. Chevrolet dominated the schedule last year, but Honda has gone to work during the off-season in working to improve their aero kits.
Notably, Helio Castroneves’ lap of 19.5858 seconds from the first session stands as the fastest lap of the day. Andretti’s lap from this session would rank third if the pair of sessions were combined together.
The teams will get two more sessions on track this weekend as they prepare for their first event back at Phoenix International Raceway since 2005.
