Dixon Leads Practice for Long Beach Grand Prix

Ryan Hunter-Reay and five-time NTT INDYCAR Series champion Scott Dixon finished 1-2 – and then 2-1 – in the first two rounds of practice Friday in advance of the 45th running of the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.

The two NTT INDYCAR series veterans had few problems piloting their Honda-powered Dallaras around the 11-turn, 1.968-mile layout around the Long Beach Convention Center. The top seven drivers were faster in the afternoon session, led by Dixon’s 1 minute 7.7940 seconds (104.505 mph) even though he thought there might be more on the table.

RHR, a former resident of nearby Orange County and the 2010 race winner, clocked 1.07.8434, the second of four drivers who broke the 1:08 barrier. The others were Dixon’s Chip Ganassi Racing teammate, rookie Felix Rosenqvist, and Team Penske’s Josef Newgarden in a Chevrolet.

Twenty-one of the 23 drivers were within one second of Dixon’s time.

Final Indycar practice is at 9 a.m., and the teams begin knockout qualifying at 12:10 p.m. Afterward, there’s a full day of racing highlighted by the IMSA Weathertech Sportscar Championship, a 100-minute timed race.

Following the IMSA race, a busy racing schedule will include Robby Gordon’s Stadium Super Trucks, Historic IMSA GTO race, and the Motegi Racing Super Drift Challenge.

“It was an average run,” said Dixon, who won the race in 2015 and is the defending series champion. “I think I missed the timing line when I went to get the fast lap out of (the run on alternate Firestone red tires). We ran long, the grip felt high, but I made some pretty big mistakes on the first two laps. But the PNC Bank car rolled off strong. It was good this morning. As you can tell, every weekend, man, it’s super tight and the mix is quite heavy, so we’ll have to see what we can do and try to create a bit of a gap there.”

Fifth belonged to another rookie, Patricio O’Ward, for Carlin Racing’s Chevrolet. Unlike Rosenqvist, who has Formula 1 experience, the 19-year-old O’Ward is a true rookie having just come off winning the Indy Lights championship in 2018.

"This place is a blast!" O'Ward said of his first Indycar experience at Long Beach. "It's quite hard to get those last three-tenths (of a second). It's really, really hard to get everything right. You have to be precise because here (because) you don't have grass (runoff areas as on permanent road course); you have a wall. It's pretty tough to get around here with a perfect lap, but I'm enjoying so far."

The top 10 was rounded out by Hunter-Reay teammate and defending race winner Alexander Rossi from the Andretti Autosport stable, Graham Rahal with Rahal Letterman Lanigan, COTA winner and rookie Colton Herta (with a morning practice time) from Harding Steinbrenner, Simon Pagenaud from Penske, and James Hinchcliffe from Arrow Schmidt Peterson.

Will Power and Sebastien Bourdais, both inducted on Thursday as the first active drivers in the GPLB Hall of Fame, were 15th and 19th respectively.

IMSA

Three-time Indy 500 champion Helio Castroneves won the pole for the Bubba Burger Sports Car Grand Prix of Long Beach. Castroneves wheeled his Acura Team Penske DPi around the course in a track record 1:11.332 (99.321 mph), and Penske teammate Juan Pablo Montoya took third. Felipe Nasr broke up a Penske sweep by placing his Cadillac DPi for Whelen Engineering Racing in second.

Nick Tandy won pole for the GTLM class in 1:16.313 (92.838 mph) in a Porsche 911 RSR.

Bourdais, doing double-duty this weekend, was fourth in a Ganassi Ford GT.

HISTORICS

In the Historic IMSA GTO qualifying, Craig Bennett edged Irvine’s Joel Miller for the pole. Bennett’s 1990 Nissan 300ZX clocked 1:24.700 to Miller’s 1:25.956 in a 1991 Mazda RX7.