Power scorches COTA pavement to lead Practice 2

Will Power rose to the fore in the final Friday practice session for the inaugural IndyCar Classic at the Circuit of the Americas.

The 2014 NTT IndyCar Series champion didn’t show his muscle until the end of the session when the drivers made their first laps on the quicker Firestone Reds.

Chip Ganassi Racing’s rookie Felix Rosenqvist was the first to experiment with the red tires and set a benchmark lap at 1 minutes 47.615 seconds. Power responded a few minutes later with a set of reds and threw down a gauntlet lap nearly two-tenths quicker at 1:47.440.

Alexander Rossi was the only other driver that broke the 107-second bracket and took the third quickest time at 1:47.9311s. His Andretti Autosport teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay was fourth quickest and Ed Jones rounded out the top five.

Zach Veach made it three Andretti Autosport cars in the top ten with the sixth quickest lap. He was followed by Simon Pagenaud in seventh and Takuma Sato in eighth.

Takuma Sato was the quickest Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing entry in eighth while Josef Newgarden only mustered the ninth quickest lap after pacing the morning session and Sebastien Bourdais rounded out the top ten.

Carlin Racing rookie Patricio O’Ward improved on his time from this morning and barely missed out on the top ten with the eleventh quickest lap.

There were no stoppages for incidents during the session, although a number of drivers exceded track limits in a handful of corners. IndyCar announced earlier in the day that there will not be any penalty this weekend for breaking the limits.

Colton Herta was the only driver that did not make a lap as his crew was still changing the Honda engine on his No. 88 Harding Steinbrenner Racing entry. He did manage to clock some laps in the pitstop practice that followed.