Josef Newgarden leads Indy 500 final practice, RHR's car erupts in flames

Josef Newgarden led the way in final practice as he prepared to go for three consecutive Indy 500 wins, running a fast lap of 225.687mph. Takuma Sato was second at 225.415mph, Scott Dixon third at 225.200mph, Devlin DeFrancesco fourth at 224.778mph, and Will Power fifth at 224.419mph. Four of the five fastest drivers are former winners of the Indy 500. 

Felix Rosenqvist, Helio Castroneves, Pato O’Ward, David Malukas, and Conor Daly filled out the remainder of the top ten.

“Good final run here,” said Newgarden, who starts 32nd for the 500. “Excited to check the car off again and work with the team. I’m really excited for Sunday. The main show. Everything we work for. I can’t wait to get back on track with Team Chevy and our entire group.” 

Power, who starts last following the Penske attenuator controversy, was bravely testing the second groove through the corners early in the session. There was also quite the moment down the backstretch as two cars split Rosenqvist three-wide as he was pulling onto the track.

Trouble for RLL

Takuma Sato, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing

Photo by: Penske Entertainment

The always-aggressive Sato made a bold pass to the outside of Rinus VeeKay with the two cars getting extremely close. Later in the session, Sato slowed with an apparent issue, forcing a brief yellow.

Sato’s RLL teammate Graham Rahal, also dealt with some undisclosed mechanical issues that ended his practice early.

“We had a mechanical failure, unfortunately,” Rahal told IndyCar on FOX. “Just how this month has gone. Seems like we are always behind and things keep happening, and this is yet another one. So we’re done for the day, unfortunately. That was my first new set of tires I had and I was just trying to get in the pack, but I could tell the car wouldn’t stay in the pack. It kept getting slower, slower, and slower. Out of (Turn) 1, I felt it grind pretty good and that was that. Just disappointing for our team. Just feels like we can’t get caught up here.”

Rookie pole-sitter Robert Shwartzman was struggling to get comfortable in the draft and Prema was taking some big swings at the car. He ended the session 29th on the time sheets. He also ran the most laps of anyone at 85.

Colton Herta reported a braking issue and actually locked up while trying to pull into his pit box. A fitting on the handle of Jack Harvey‘s fuel rig popped off and it was preventing fuel from flowing. Alexander Rossi was done halfway through the session due to a water pump that failed. 

RHR’s car goes up in flames

With about 40 minutes left in the session, Ryan Hunter-Reay stopped at the end of pit road and scrambled to climb from the car as fire erupted from beneath the engine cover. 

“I just felt a lot of liquid on my left side,” said Hunter-Reay, who won the Indy 500 in 2014. “It just felt really cold. Your first (thought) is fuel. I had a methanol fire back in 2003, and I just remember what went on there and that same kind of feeling. After I felt the liquid or whatever it was — it could have been some kind of fire retardant liquid, but it just started smoking more and more. I just tried to keep air speed up to get back to this side of the track where there’s more help. I was thinking, I just don’t want to stop in my box where you have all these people here without suits on and everything. And then I looked like Ace Ventura trying to come out of the rhino (while climbing from the car). Got out, no big fire. It didn’t look like it caused a lot of damage, but I lost the ability to shift — I lost the ability to turn the car off.

“That’s a bummer. I hope it’s not a hybrid deal because Jack [Harvey] earlier in the week had a hybrid melt down on him, but that caught my attention. When it started filling up with smoke when I’m in fourth gear, that’s when you know something is going seriously wrong.”

The final few minutes of practice saw most of the teams practicing pit entries and pit stops ahead of the 109th running of the Indy 500 on Sunday.