Alex Palou – Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Photo by Chris Owens

By John Sturbin, Raceday San Antonio

Championship leader Alex Palou ushered-in INDYCAR’s hybrid power unit era Friday atop the time sheet at Mid-Ohio Sports Course after a soggy practice for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Presented by the 2025 Civic Hybrid.

Alex Palou – Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – Photo by Paul Hurley

A 90-minute session conducted in mixed weather conditions prevented most of the field from logging enough track time to give the hybrid system a true workout. Nevertheless, Palou _ the two-time/reigning NTT IndyCar Series champion from Spain _ was quickest at 1-minute, 7.0650-seconds/121.208 mph in the No. 10 Ridgeline Lubricants Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

Palou, who leads Team Penske’s Will Power by 23 points in the standings, has emerged as the recent master of the natural-terrain layout in Lexington, Ohio, via a victory last July and three consecutive podium finishes dating to 2021.

“Not much running,” said Palou, who turned his best lap on the seven of eight he completed. “I think everybody wanted to get more. We didn’t really get all the learnings we wanted. Happy with the first run we got, but we’re looking forward to (P2 today).”

This event marks the launch of INDYCAR’s long-awaited hybrid power unit era, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the Indianapolis-based sanctioning body and OEM partners Chevrolet and Honda. The unit pairs the existing 2.2-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 internal combustion engine with ground-breaking supercapacitor hybrid technology.

A low-voltage (48V) motor generator unit (MGU) is paired to an energy storage system (ESS), both of which fit into the bellhousing between the engine and the gearbox. The MGU builds power that is stored in the ESS’ 20 supercapacitors. The additional horsepower is deployed through the same motor generator on drivers’ demand.

The hybrid power unit (280 kilojoules per lap at Mid-Ohio) will be available in addition to traditional push-to-pass on road and street circuits (200 seconds at a maximum of 20 seconds per push at Mid-Ohio). Used simultaneously, the package will provide an additional 120-plus horsepower on driver demand.

On Friday, however, two red flags during the first 50 minutes of the session reduced track time. And the arrival of intensifying rain with about 26 minutes left divided the session into two distinct parts.

All 27 drivers circulated early on the freshly paved, 2.258-mile/13-turn circuit, in a bid to learn grip limits of the smooth asphalt while working with the hybrid system. But once rain arrived and intensified, only a handful of drivers _ Pato O’Ward, Kyle Kirkwood, Colton Herta, Alexander Rossi and Felix Rosenqvist among them _ switched to Firestone Firehawk rain tires and tip-toed around the wet track. Nearly every driver remained in the pits to avoid risking an incident.

Alexander Rossi – Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – Photo by Chris Owens

Rossi ended up second at 1:07.5093/120.410 mph _ just 0.4493-seconds behind Palou _ in the No. 7 VELO Arrow McLaren Chevrolet he will be vacating at season’s end. Arrow McLaren INDYCAR Team announced its 2025 lineup Tuesday, confirming that Christian Lundgaard will join O’Ward and recent addition Nolan Siegel in the team’s three-car lineup. Lundgaard, a native of Denmark, currently drives the No. 45 Hy-Vee Honda fielded by Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing.

“There’s been a lot of noise going into the weekend, which is all a part of racing this time of year,” Rossi said. “I’m focusing on the second half of the season and the debut of the long-awaited hybrid.

“We only got one run in because of the rain, but the car seems to be in a good window. The hybrid works as we expected, which is good. We even got a couple laps in the rainy conditions. It’s hard to really know where we’re at, but certainly the No. 7 VELO Arrow McLaren Chevrolet is in a good place to start the weekend.”

Marcus Armstrong was third at 1:07.5442/120.348 mph in the No. 11 Root Insurance Chip Ganassi Racing Honda before spinning off-track in Turn 2 to trigger one of the two red flags. Herta, the 2020 Mid-Ohio winner, was fourth at 1:07.6346/120.187 mph in the No. 26 Gainbridge Honda of Andretti Global with Curb-Agajanian. Scott McLaughlin completed the top-five at 1:07.6827/120.102 mph in the No. 3 Sonsio Team Penske Chevrolet.

“The Sonsio Chevy team had a great plan for the session to gradually work in the hybrid system,” said McLaughlin, a native of New Zealand. “Unfortunately, the weather had other ideas for us. We got 14 laps in so that gave us something to build on for qualifying. We have a lot of miles left to run this weekend, but everything worked great for us. No issues.”

Pato O’Ward – Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – Photo by Paul Hurley

Pato O’Ward placed seventh at 1:07.8407/119.822 mph _ the sixth of 11 laps he completed in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet.

“Yeah, obviously not ideal that it started raining there at the end,” said O’Ward, a native of Mexico with family ties to San Antonio. “Would have liked to get a few more laps. We truly only kind of got one. Everything else was just always traffic, stack-ups, everybody trying to get clean gaps. But these tracks aren’t long enough for the 27 cars that we have. So that’s kind of been a little tough in these practice sessions.

“At least we got one in, a decent lap in, that we can kind of look over and really see what we need. I know what we need from the car, so that’s the most important thing.”

O’Ward was the NTT P1 award-winner at Mid-Ohio in 2022 and has posted three top-10s on race day. “I don’t expect this race to be any different to the last few years,” O’Ward said. “It’s going to be a track-position race, very sensitive to where you qualify. And yeah, that’s going to be the full focus (today), just trying to get this car as close to the front row as we can.”

O’Ward said he can “feel it” in the seat of his pants when the hybrid system kicks-in. “It’s obviously not as big as I think people are thinking in terms of lap time,” O’Ward said. “It’s less than two-tenths, I would say, with a perfectly optimized usage of deployment strategy.

“I think the system is capable of so much more, so I would like to see that evolve into let’s really push this system and see how much it can actually give us in terms of lap time. Because if it gives us four, five, six-tenths over the lap, I think that’s when we’ll really see it getting optimized by all the teams and just trying to perfect it as much as possible. Because now, it won’t be as…it’ll usually overthrow a little balance difference in the car exactly.

Pato O’Ward – Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio – (Photo by Travis Hinkle | IMS Photo)

“Obviously it’s brand new, and we just need to kind of go through the whole process, I’d say.”

O’Ward previously has tested a McLaren Formula 1 car, as the globe-trotting FIA World Championship features high-tech hybrid technology. “I wouldn’t say it’s similar to the Formula 1 car, it’s the same kind of idea of, like, the braking generates the energy, it goes into the pack and then you deploy it where you wish.

“Different to us, we have to manually deploy. If you get out of sequence and you have to manually kind of regen, there’s limits to how much you can regen and limits to how much you can deploy, so there’s a lot of limits that we need to work through.

“The balance of the car has changed. I think it’s an accumulation of both the new tarmac and the 100 pounds at the rear of the car that have shuffled the mechanical balance of the car rearwards. I think you’ll see teams and drivers get creative for the race. I think that’s where you’re going to see a massive shift in, like, effect on the tire or stuff like that. I’d say car balance is still a priority.”

Among the closest pursuers to Palou in points, Power placed 10th at 1:08.1458/119.285 mph in the No. 12 Verizon Business Team Penske Chevrolet. Third-place Scott Dixon, the six-time series champion from New Zealand, was 19th at 1:08.4384/118.775 mph in the No. 9 PNC Bank Chip Ganassi Racing Honda.

“It was nice to get out there and work on the hybrid over a race weekend,” said Power, a two-time series champ and native of Australia who logged 15 laps. “Wish we could have had more time but there wasn’t any benefit for us to go out in the rain. The weekend looks to be very clear. Definitely deployed the hybrid on the No. 12 Verizon Chevrolet and it worked pretty seamlessly. (Saturday) will be a big day.”

Up next is a one-hour practice followed by NTT P1 Award qualifying at 3 p.m. Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network will broadcast both sessions, which Palou said will have even greater importance due to the limited laps turned Friday.

“I think everybody with the hybrid system wants to get reads on all the stages and also get the car where we want because with the repave, everything changed quite a lot,” Palou said. “It’s going to be exciting.”

Live coverage of the 80-lap/180.64-mile race will start at 1:30 p.m. (EDT) Sunday on NBC, Peacock, the INDYCAR Radio Network and SiriusXM Channel 218.

Arrow McLaren IndyCar Team’s 2025 lineup of Pato O’Ward, current rookie Nolan Siegel and newcomer Christian Lundgaard is the first confirmed during “Silly Season.” Odd-man out is native Californian Alexander Rossi, who is in his second season with the team and finished ninth in the championship in 2023. Rossi won the landmark 100^th edition of the Indianapolis 500 in 2016 as a series rookie driving for Andretti Autosport, now Andretti Global.

Lundgaard, 22, currently is 11th in the point standings with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. A native of Hedensted, Denmark, Lundgaard’s INDYCAR resume includes one win, two poles and three podiums to-date. He was named the NTT IndyCar Series Rookie of the Year in 2022 with RLLR, for whom he has raced throughout his three seasons in INDYCAR.

Lundgaard is the only Danish race-winner in INDYCAR history, having posted a dominant performance on the Streets of Toronto in 2023. Before launching his professional career in North America, Lundgaard was an Alpine development racer competing in the FIA Formula 2 Championship, where he earned two wins and nine podiums across the 2020-21 seasons. He also raced with Alpine in the 2019 FIA Formula 3 Championship and produced a win, two podiums and two poles.

INDYCAR has announced six-position starting grid penalties for the No. 11 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda driven by Marcus Armstrong of New Zealand, the No. 30 Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing Honda driven by Pietro Fittipaldi of Brazil and the No. 60 Meyer Shank Racing Honda driven by Felix Rosenqvist of Sweden for unapproved engine changes following the Thursday, June 27, team test at Iowa Speedway.

The teams were in violation of Rule 16.1.2.3.2. A fifth (5^th) Engine is eligible to earn Engine Manufacturer points if a Full Season Entrant has completed the Full Season Entrant Engine Mileage with its first four (4) Engines. Otherwise, a fifth (5^th) or more Engine does not earn Engine Manufacturer points and will be considered an Unapproved Engine change-out.

According to Rule 16.1.6.1.2., the penalty is a six-position starting grid penalty on road and street-course events and nine positions at oval events and will be served at the series’ next event _ Sunday’s The Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Presented by the 2025 Civic Hybrid.

The INDY NXT by Firestone standings point to a two-driver race for the 2024 title between Louis Foster and Jacob Abel. But Caio Collet clearly had an alternate agenda Friday after the first practice for the Grand Prix at Mid-Ohio.

Brazilian rookie Collet topped the time sheet with a best lap of 1-minute, 11.4390-seconds/113.787 mph in the No. 18 HMD Motorsports car on the recently repaved 2.258-mile/13-turn Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Collet is third in the series standings with six races remaining, 84 points behind leader Foster and 49 points behind second-place Abel.

“This is the first weekend that we started quite well like that,” Collet said. “I think we always have been starting a little bit on the back foot comparing to Louis, and then we just play a little bit of catch-up during the weekend.

“I think we put in the work after Laguna Seca. This is a track that we tested. I knew a little bit where to turn. So, that was quite nice. The car felt really, really good throughout the whole session and hopefully we can keep going like this Saturday.”

Rookie Christian Brooks, making his third INDY NXT start, ended up second at 1:11.6864/113.394 mph in the No. 39 HMD Motorsports car recently vacated by Nolan Siegel after his promotion to Arrow McLaren in the NTT IndyCar Series. Brooks is doing double-duty this weekend, also competing in the USF Pro 2000 event at Mid-Ohio.

Englishman Foster was third at 1:11.6920/113.385 mph in the No. 26 Copart/Novara Technologies car of Andretti Global, followed by Reece Gold in the No. 10 HMD Motorsports car at 1:11.8076/113.203 mph.

Abel completed the top-five in the 45-minute session, which started in very light rain, at 1:11.8818/113.086 mph in the No. 51 Abel Construction car fielded by Abel Motorsports.

While Collet was more than two-tenths of a second quicker than Brooks, just slightly more than three-tenths separated Brooks from the eighth-quickest driver, Myles Rowe in the No. 99 HMD Motorsports with Force Indy machine.

Qualifying is set for 2:05 p.m. (EDT) today on INDYCAR LIVE and the INDYCAR Radio Network. Live coverage of the 35-lap/55-minute race is scheduled to start at 11:15 a.m. Sunday on Peacock and the INDYCAR Radio Network.