{"id":33380,"date":"2021-04-23T22:28:01","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T03:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=33380"},"modified":"2021-04-23T22:29:08","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T03:29:08","slug":"newgarden-rebounds-to-lead-opening-practice-at-st-petersburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2021\/04\/23\/newgarden-rebounds-to-lead-opening-practice-at-st-petersburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Newgarden rebounds to lead opening practice at St. Petersburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of the NTT IndyCar Series<\/em><\/p>\n

PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Like any great athlete after a tough performance, Josef Newgarden apparently has no mental memory and a lot of muscle memory.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Josef Newgarden. Photo by Chris Owens<\/p><\/div>\n

Newgarden rebounded from crashing out on Lap 1 of the season-opening Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama presented by AmFirst last Sunday at Barber Motorsports Park by leading the opening practice Friday for the Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n

Practice 1 Results<\/a> |<\/p>\n

Two-time NTT INDYCAR SERIES champion Newgarden posted a top lap of 1 minute, .8029 of a second in the No. 2 Hitachi Team Penske Chevrolet in a very competitive session with times bunched together up and down the time sheet. It comes as little surprise Newgarden rallied today, as he has title-winning mettle and knows speed on this 14-turn, 1.8-mile temporary street circuit as well as any driver in the field, with victories in 2019 and 2020.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m not even thinking about it, to be honest, because it’s so early,\u201d Newgarden said of his 23rd-place position in the standings after one race. \u201cAs far as points go, it’s not ideal. Obviously, in a perfect world we would have started off with much better points and ideally a win.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to have a solid weekend. It was a shame we just didn’t even really get to be in the race (at Barber). It’s more of a shame when you affect other people’s days, like Colton (Herta), I felt bad about that, amongst others.\u201d<\/p>\n

2014 series champion Will Power completed a Team Penske sweep of the top two spots, slotting in second at 1:00.8102 in the No. 12 Verizon 5G Team Penske Chevrolet. Colton Herta, who also was collected in the Lap 1 crash at Barber, rallied to end up third today at 1:00.8348 in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda.<\/p>\n

Herta\u2019s teammate Alexander Rossi was fourth at 1:00.8653 in the No. 27 NAPA AUTO PARTS\/AutoNation Honda. Team Penske ended up with three of the top five spots, as 2016 series champion Simon Pagenaud rounded out the top five at 1:00.8992 in the No. 22 Menards\/Australian Gold Team Penske Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got something this weekend,\u201d Pagenaud said. \u201cWe really do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just .0963 of a second separated the top five drivers under sunny skies and in temperatures in the low 80s. That ultra-competitive trend continued almost all the way to the bottom of the 24-car time sheet, as less than one second separated Newgarden from the 20th-quickest driver, Barber race winner Alex Palou in the No. 10 NTT DATA Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the track was really high grip, honestly, more so than what I was expecting,\u201d Newgarden said. \u201cThat’s probably what brought the times tighter. Normally when it grips up, we get really close as far as the entire pack.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, it’s going to be tough. You got to be on it. Can’t make even the littlest mistake. That can set you back pretty far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott McLaughlin was quickest of the heralded class of three series rookies this season, eighth at 1:01.0158 in the No. 3 DEX Imaging Team Penske Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

There were no incidents during the session despite the tight confines of portions of the street circuit, lined on both sides by concrete walls. Two-time race winner Sebastien Bourdais and rookie Roman Grosjean both overshot corners with no contact while testing the limits, but both were able to continue.<\/p>\n

Practice continues at 9:45 a.m. (ET) Saturday, with live coverage on Peacock Premium. Qualifying for the NTT P1 Award is scheduled to start at 1:45 p.m., with live coverage on Peacock Premium and same-day coverage at 10 p.m. on NBCSN.<\/p>\n

Live coverage of the 100-lap race starts at noon Sunday on NBC and the INDYCAR Radio Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Courtesy of the NTT IndyCar Series PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2013 Like any great athlete after a tough performance, Josef Newgarden apparently has no mental memory and a lot of muscle memory. Newgarden rebounded from crashing out on Lap 1 of the season-opening Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama presented by AmFirst last Sunday at Barber Motorsports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":33381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[97,22,286,672],"class_list":["post-33380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-indycar","tag-firestone-grand-prix-of-st-petersburg","tag-indycar","tag-josef-newgarden","tag-ntt-indycar-series"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/16C_7475-1-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1704","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-8Go","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33382,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33380\/revisions\/33382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}