Yesterday’s pacesetter McLaughlin wasted no time in flirting with the 1m06-second barrier, getting down to a 1m07.0036s on his third lap and then broke through it with a 1m06.7282s on his fifth lap.
With 36 minutes to go, his nearest challenger became team-mate Newgarden, just 0.0053s behind, but Christian Lundgaard and Graham Rahal were an encouraging third and sixth for Rahal Letterman Lanigan.
Lundgaard proved that RLL’s strong showing was no fluke by bouncing back into third as the times tumbled, just 0.04s off McLaughlin’s benchmark, while Callum Ilott of Juncos Hollinger Racing jumped into sixth until he was bumped down by Long Beach winner of Kyle Kirkwood of Andretti Autosport and another Arrow McLaren’s Felix Rosenqvist.
Romain Grosjean, who lost most of yesterday’s session when his Honda expired, was able to climb to third spot, but that became fourth when Palou went fastest of all with a 1m06.6568s with 17 minutes to go, and then lowered the bar to 1m06.2781s – 0.45s ahead of McLaughlin – an average speed of 124.928mph.
Pato O’Ward got his McLaren into seventh, ahead of an impressive showing by Devlin DeFrancesco of Andretti, while his teammate Colton Herta made a great save at Turn 14 to pop into fifth. He trimmed his time further to scramble into second – but still four tenths away from Palou’s benchmark.
Newgarden and McLaughlin improved with less than a dozen minutes left to go 0.23s and 0.26s respectively behind Palou.
Source: Autosport