news: Carpenter fastest, Alonso fourth in Practice 3

Ed Carpenter has set the pace on a day of limited running at a windy Indianapolis, as Fernando Alonso finished Practice 3 fourth fastest.

On the slowest of the three days of practice thus far, Carpenter lapped Indianapolis Motor Speedway in a time of 40.3779s (222.894mph, 358.713km/h) just as the clock ticked over to the final hour.

The #20 Ed Carpenter Racing Chevrolet just pipped Scott Dixon’s best effort in the Kiwi’s Chip Ganassi Honda, set halfway through the piece, while JR Hildebrand made it both ECR cars in the top three.

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Alonso improved twice in the final hour in his McLaren/Andretti Autosport Honda to finish fourth.

With wind gusting over 20mph (32.2km/h), conditions which Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Graham Rahal described on his radio as “stupid,” just 14 of the 33 drivers set representative lap times.

Only Josef Newgarden ventured onto the track in a Team Penske Chevrolet, with Will Power, Simon Pagenaud, Helio Castroneves, and Juan Pablo Montoya all sitting out the six-hour session.

Practice 4 starts on Friday morning at 0200 AEST, while qualifying commences on Saturday (local time).

Practice 3: Indianapolis 500

Pos	Driver	C/A/E/T	Time	Diff	Gap	Best lap	Total laps
1	Carpenter, Ed	D/C/C/F	0:40.3779			50	52
2	Dixon, Scott	D/H/H/F	0:40.4315	0.0536	0.0536	34	47
3	Hildebrand, JR	D/C/C/F	0:40.8066	0.4287	0.3751	24	54
4	Alonso, Fernando (R)	D/H/H/F	0:40.9961	0.6182	0.1895	28	39
5	Daly, Conor	D/C/C/F	0:41.0523	0.6744	0.0562	21	22
6	Chilton, Max	D/H/H/F	0:41.1199	0.7420	0.0676	6	23
7	Munoz, Carlos	D/C/C/F	0:41.1260	0.7481	0.0061	13	28
8	Veach, Zach (R)	D/C/C/F	0:41.1643	0.7864	0.0383	45	46
9	Kimball, Charlie	D/H/H/F	0:41.2614	0.8835	0.0971	4	12
10	Howard, Jay	D/H/H/F	0:41.4175	1.0396	0.1561	3	9
11	Kanaan, Tony	D/H/H/F	0:41.4638	1.0859	0.0463	1	8
12	Rahal, Graham	D/H/H/F	0:41.5002	1.1223	0.0364	5	5
13	Aleshin, Mikhail	D/H/H/F	0:41.5045	1.1266	0.0043	1	2
14	Hinchcliffe, James	D/H/H/F	0:41.6025	1.2246	0.0980	2	8
15	Newgarden, Josef	D/C/C/F	0:56.3942	16.0163	14.7917	3	11
16	Harvey, Jack (R)	D/H/H/F	0:57.4418	17.0639	1.0476	18	18
17	Karam, Sage	D/C/C/F	0:59.5514	19.1735	2.1096	6	9
18	Sato, Takuma	D/H/H/F	1:21.9092	41.5313	22.3578	2	2
19	Rossi, Alexander	D/H/H/F	1:23.8623	43.4844	1.9531	3	3
20	Andretti, Marco	D/H/H/F	1:27.5898	47.2119	3.7275	4	4
21	Servia, Oriol	D/H/H/F	2:26.8176	1:46.4397	59.2278	2	6