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As the opening practice session for the Bommarito Automotive Group 500 entered its final minutes, Scott McLaughlin spun on his final out lap at World Wide Technology Raceway. As the #3 Team Penske Chevrolet was partially on the track and also on the grass separating the warmup lane from the first and second turns, teammate Will Power went to the high groove and into the tire debris to avoid the Kiwi.
Power no longer had full control as he hit the wall. The #12 machine went across the track into Marcus Ericsson’s path, forcing the Swede to hit Power’s car and igniting the Toowoomba native’s well known off the cuff candor.
“I saw some dumbass down on the apron spinning and unfortunately I had to go up and got in the wall,” Power said. “Just destroyed my car, got hit, just really pissed.”
Ericsson was a bit more through in his post-accident analysis.
“Obviously I saw McLaughlin I think it was on the inside there spinning and saw Will going high and just tried to figure out where to go,” Ericsson said. “But obviously you have a lot of steering lock and a lot of load in the car when you go through there and I saw he was going up against the wall, so I tried to go low, but then he was just spinning down, so yeah, just really a shame.”
McLaughlin was very apologetic after his track time ended.
“It’s my own fault, massive apologies to Marcus, the 8 crew and the 12 crew with Will,” McLaughlin said. “I was pushing the out lap on my brand new set of red tires and I cut the inside just a little bit coming off the apron and it must be still a little bit wet or something. That was very scary. I hate to see what happened, especially to a teammate but not only that, competitors, just a really dangerous situation.”
At the top of the time sheet, Josef Newgarden’s bid for a fourth victory at Gateway got off to a strong start by leading the opening hour-long practice session.
The 2023 Indianapolis 500 winner went around the short oval in 24.9944s to average 180.040 mph in the #2 Team Penske Chevrolet.
McLaughlin was second fastest, .0958 seconds slower than the Tennessee native while 2019 Gateway winner Takuma Sato was third fastest.
Power was fourth fastest ahead of Felix Rosenqvist in fifth.
The session started several hours later than scheduled due to several rain storms moving their way through the St. Louis area, keeping the asymmetrical oval saturated well into the evening.
Sato brought out the first yellow flag of the session as the #11 Chip Ganassi Racing Honda went very high toward the wall in Turn 4, nearly brushing the SAFER barrier but not putting a rubber mark on the barrier.
The incident involving McLaughlin, Power and Ericsson happened shortly after the session resumed.
Following the one-hour session was a 30-minute high-groove sessions where drivers were split into two groups and told to run in the high lane around each corner to help put more rubber onto the track’s outside groove.
Qualifying will begin at 10:00 a.m. CT, or 1:00 a.m. Monday morning AEST. The race broadcast will begin at 5:30 a.m. AEST.
Practice results:
- Josef Newgarden
- Scott McLaughlin
- Takuma Sato
- Will Power
- Felix Rosenqvist
- Alexander Rossi
- Colton Herta
- Conor Daly
- Marcus Ericsson
- Callum Ilott
- Pato O’Ward
- David Malukas
- Romain Grosjean
- Alex Palou
- Sting Ray Robb
- Scott Dixon
- Linus Lundqvist
- Devlin DeFrancesco
- Kyle Kirkwood
- Christian Lundgaard
- Helio Castroneves
- Agustin Canapino
- Ryan Hunter-Reay
- Rinus VeeKay
- Santino Ferrucci
- Benjamin Pedersen
- Ed Carpenter
- Graham Rahal
