Josef Newgarden’s quest for Portland glory begins by topping Friday practice. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
PORTLAND, Ore. — As the saying goes about Oregon’s notorious city, things can get a little weird. When it comes to Friday’s practice session for the Grand Prix of Portland, as Danielle told Alana in the movie Licorice Pizza, “Weird is whatever you think it is.”
To some folks, a video board delaying practice can be classified as weird because it is a wild circumstance nobody would have imagined impacting a race weekend.
With over 50 minutes remaining in the session, the video board where fans can see the action collapsed behind the front stretch. It caused a litany of delays that pushed the schedule back a considerable amount of time. Notably, the session not resuming until an hour later.
Fortunately, the session was able to resume and go the distance. However, the madness would not stop there as multiple incidents resulted in several penalties and crushed hopes with race day being only two days away.
The cause of the hour-long red flag at Portland wasn’t ideal for the fans. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
Among those having problems were Takuma Sato, who crashed in Turn 11 and saw his No. 51 Honda lift up in the air before hitting the tire barriers. The AMR Safety Crew quickly arrived at the scene where they had to lift up the barrier to get Sato’s Dale Coyne with Rick Ware Racing entry out and back going.
A few minutes went by and Sato’s car only had cosmetic damage. Sato was able to return his car in the pits but did not return to the circuit.
Sato’s Friday afternoon ended late in the session after crashing into the barriers. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
Later in the session, Pato O’Ward, a long shot in the quest for the Astor Cup, went off in Turn 5. Once he served a five-minute penalty for causing the red flag, the starter of his No. 5 Chevrolet would not re-fire. This gave Arrow McLaren SP no other choice but to bring the car behind the wall and end his day.
When the dust finally settled and as the sun began to bear down, the top-three finishers, Josef Newgarden, David Malukas and Scott McLaughlin, at Gateway ended up leading the practice charts. They just so happened to end up in that exact order after the delayed session.
Prior to practice, Malukas explained the unique nature Portland International Raceway can be for a competitor, more so when he enters the penultimate round of the season with tremendous momentum.
“It’s going to come down to how the tire reacts here and the tire degredation going into the race,” said Malukas. “Also, we never really get to test the red tires until qualifying. We’ll see and hopefully we can learn how the tires react.”
With so much madness after one day, the vibe around the paddock remained strange due to the unknowns going into Sunday’s race. Most notably, the debate on how to go about the start of the race.
McLaughlin explained there is really no other choice but go into it without having a plan. Especially, when the session had constant red flags that crushed some groove to the competitors that are trying to find the right pace at Portland.
“I don’t think you can plan here. You’ve just got to get through it. Keep your front wing on it,” said McLaughlin. “But really today doesn’t — yeah, there was a lot of red flags and stuff, but I think we can’t preempt what’s going to happen at Turn 1. What will happen will happen, and hopefully you’ll be on the right side of it.”
Scott McLaughlin currently sits sixth in points with two rounds remaining. (Photo: Luis Torres | The Podium Finish)
Behind the top-three fastest drivers were the Andretti Autosport duo of Alexander Rossi and Colton Herta. Championship leader Will Power ended up 10th quickest in practice. He leads the championship by only three points over his Team Penske teammate Josef Newgarden.
Down in seventh was Kyle Kirkwood, who only has two races left with AJ Foyt Racing before going to Andretti Autosport in 2023. While Kirkwood has had success in Road to Indy, including a win last year in Portland, he is aware of what is at stake come race day.
“I went through (Turn 1) a couple times. I went through it the first, when they had it, it was extremely tight initially. They opened it up a little bit in the first portion, but the second portion is still very, very tight,” Kirkwood explained.
“I think if you look back kind of where I was watching the Indy Lights session and someone missed their brake point there, and you kind of — there’s so many signs out there that you almost don’t know which one to kind of aim for.”
“You can definitely catch someone out. I think in the situation of a race where people are diving to the inside and stuff, there’s a lot that are right there next to that curb that probably aren’t necessary because a lot of people if you look at last year’s race, they all went just to the inside of the curb and then shot left, they didn’t go all the way left. It requires someone at the moment if there were to be an incident to shoot way left and almost go against traffic, which I don’t think is very right. But that’s I guess the decision that we’ve made.”
The series will have two more practice sessions with qualifying sandwiched in between Saturday before the 110-lap madness unfolds. Live coverage of the Grand Prix of Portland commences at 3:00 p.m. ET on NBC. Alex Palou is the defending race winner.
