IndyCar cancels rest of Indy 500 Open Test due to rain
IndyCar officials have thrown the checkered flag on its two-day Open Test on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway ahead of next month's Indianapolis 500, with rain showers that began early Wednesday afternoon having stretched into Thursday morning without a short-term end in sight.
It puts a premature end to a pair of days slated to give teams an early look at their work over the offseason in preparation for the Greatest Spectacle in Racing that is now a little over six weeks away. Originally slated to include 13 hours of on-track running, and then expanded earlier this week to 15 (due to the threat of inclement weather), the 2.5-mile oval at the Racing Capital of the World was green for just over three hours between 9 a.m. and 2:06 p.m. Wednesday before rain forced cars back into the garages for the day -- and eventually into teams' transporters to haul back to their shops.
Though Friday had been said to be a fallback option in the case of bad weather Wednesday and Thursday, there was little desire among teams and the series to utilize it once some level of running took place Wednesday. Most, if not all, of the full-time entries were running their primary road-and-street-course chassis for 500 Open Testing, rather than their purpose-built cars for May (so to avoid a crash in testing that could destroy much of teams' massaging on those cars that have taken place over much of the last 10 months). That decision then left full-time teams' crews and mechanics set to thrash Friday to flip the cars back into street course configuration ahead of next week's Grand Prix of Long Beach and the days' worth of cross-country travel by transporter drivers to get cars and necessary equipment out to the west coast for setup day on Thursday.
Had teams tested Friday -- or even spent all of Thursday and part of Friday waiting for rain to subside -- it would've left team managers with the tough ask of their crews to work into the weekend to get cars ready for Long Beach, already with just one scheduled off weekend after this one until mid-June.
In all, the 11 teams and 34 drivers who took part in Wednesday's on-track running combined to turn 1,328 laps -- an average of just over 39 per entry. All three rookies yet to have completed their Rookie Orientation Programs as of Wednesday morning -- ECR's Christian Rasmussen, DCR's Nolan Siegel and CGR's Kyffin Simpson -- knocked out their three-stage programs just before the rainy deluge began Wednesday afternoon, clearing them to run full-tilt once 500 practice opens May 14. The three veteran drivers in need of knocking out refresher programs -- Andretti Global's Marco Andretti, RLL's Pietro Fittipaldi and DCR's Katherine Legge -- completed their two-stage programs as well.
That group of a half-dozen drivers largely led the field, in terms of total laps completed, with Simpson, the Ganassi rookie who just turned 19 in October, leading the charge with 80. Rasmussen (73), Fittipaldi (63), Siegel (59) and Legge (56) all turned more laps than any of the 28 drivers not required to complete special test programs for the series to gain clearance to attempt to qualify next month. Of that group, Pato O'Ward (55), Rinus VeeKay (54) and Alex Palou (51) all topped 50 laps on the day.
On the low end, 2014 500 winner Ryan Hunter-Reay managed just seven laps in his return to Dreyer and Reinbold Racing, all of them plagued by mechanical and electrical issues that largely kept the No. 23 Chevy off-track. Callum Ilott, Arrow McLaren's stand-in for the still-recovering David Malukas, also logged fewer than 10 laps in the No. 6 Chevy. Four other drivers -- RLL's Christian Lundgaard (10), JHR's Agustin Canapino (13), RLL's Takuma Sato (15) and Foyt's Sting Ray Robb (17) -- logged fewer than 20 laps Wednesday.
Hunter-Reay's DRR teammate Conor Daly managed just 22 laps, leaving the only true one-off team in the field presently confirmed to run in May with fewer than 30 laps of data to analyze over the next four-plus weeks after some major additions of new parts to the cars in the offseason. Two other two-car teams -- AJ Foyt Racing (50 laps) and Juncos Hollinger Racing (44 laps) -- were the other full-time programs who ran fewer than 100 laps on the day.
On the other end, Chip Ganassi Racing, the lone five-car team in the field, logged 267 -- at least 100 more than all the other teams and more than double seven of the 10.
‘I did learn quite a bit’: Larson on his IMS Open Test and more on his May schedule
For the third consecutive year, Team Penske's Josef Newgarden paced Open Testing at IMS, this time with a leading lap of 228.811 mph in the morning veteran session -- nearly 2.5 mph faster than the rest of the field. The closest competitor to the defending 500 winner? None other than 2021 NASCAR Cup champ and 500 rookie Kyle Larson (226.384 mph), who next month will be the first driver in a decade to attempt 'The Double' the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
IndyCar will be on-track next for Friday practice on the streets of Long Beach at 5:50 p.m. ET, still with races at Long Beach (April 21), Barber Motorsport (April 28) and the IMS road course (May 11) before Indy cars return to the IMS oval to continue the lead-in to the 108th running of the Indy 500.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indy 500 Open Test at IMS ends early due to ongoing rain
