Palou paces incident-free first Indy 500 practice

The Chip Ganassi Racing driver set a 225.937 mph lap at the famous Brickyard, putting 0.0074s on Meyer Shank Racing’s Marcus Armstrong on a 225.895 mph lap.

Hometown hero Conor Daly was third-fastest for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing with a 225.838 mph lap.

Daly is gunning for his first Indianapolis 500 in his 13th start.

“Our car is fast. It just feels really good,” said Daly after practice.

“So just kind of driving around and working through a few small things and just tuning to kind of what I want and evaluating a few other things.

“Just a good day one. Obviously the test was good too, but this whole process is you can get swept up in it. You can get behind, and you can get a little messy.

“The wind got super gusty towards the end of the day. One set of tyres, all of a sudden I think I’m going to crash. I’m sliding around. But we quartered the left rear, so I was, like, okay, we figured that problem out. Then we put another set of tires on. All problems are solved.

“You don’t want to fall behind in kind of overreacting to things. I think that’s just kind of what our job is just go through things one step at a time, and it feels good so far.”

The six-hour practice was incident-free, though Palou started the day with a balance issue.

“It was just balance, not being super happy with it,” said Palou.

“We found something that explained what I was feeling and it was good to go back out today before we go to sleep so we can be a bit happier.

“But yeah, the car feels good now and yeah, just a shame that the session is over.

“You always want to do a lot more [laps]. We didn’t do many laps today, but still we understood a lot of stuff.

“This is a different car to what I had at the open test. So, it was very important just to see how I felt If I was confident or not. I’m feeling much better than this morning.”

Time spent in the garage reduced the Spaniard to just 28 laps of the oval. That was in stark contrast to Alexander Rossi, who completed 116 laps for Ed Carpenter Racing.

Palou’s fastest time came in the final 10 minutes of the session with a tow.

Palou’s six-time championship-winning teammate Scott Dixon was fifth, just behind Team Penske’s two-time champion and two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden.

Scott McLaughlin was eighth and just head of his Team Penske stablemate David Malukas in 10th.

“First, great to be back for the “Month of May.” Didn’t do as many laps as I probably wanted,” said McLaughlin.

“We had a couple little issues, but every time we ran the car it was on track it was super quick. Great to be back in the Yellow Submarine with Pennzoil. Chevy is feeling great.”

Will Power made a steady start to practice, logging 44 laps with a best effort of 221.455 mph to be 27th overall. He was second-fastest on the no-tow list behind Andretti Global teammate Kyle Kirkwood with a 222.062 mph lap.

Practice 2 takes place on Thursday at 3am (AEST).

Results: 110th Indianapolis 500, Practice 1