{"id":14489,"date":"2023-05-12T11:58:12","date_gmt":"2023-05-12T15:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=14489"},"modified":"2023-08-25T09:13:01","modified_gmt":"2023-08-25T13:13:01","slug":"oward-lands-p1-after-gmr-grand-prix-practice-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2023\/05\/12\/oward-lands-p1-after-gmr-grand-prix-practice-1\/","title":{"rendered":"O&#8217;Ward lands P1 after GMR Grand Prix Practice 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The start of practice #1 for Saturday&#8217;s\u00a0GMR Grand Prix at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indianapolismotorspeedway.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Indianapolis Motor Speedway<\/a> was anything but ordinary.<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The \ud83e\udd77 back at it again. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/INDYCAR?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#INDYCAR<\/a> \/\/ <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PatricioOWard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@PatricioOWard<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/oh5UTJlDGB\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/oh5UTJlDGB<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IndyCar\/status\/1657026592630091778?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 12, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>With rain hitting the Indianapolis area overnight and early this morning a lot of teams were hesitant at the start of practice to take the track, but after all the rain dried for the most part, Arrow McLaren&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Pato-OWard\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Pato O&#8217;Ward<\/strong><\/a> in his #5 Chevrolet found himself at P1 after practice session #1 with a time of 01:09.4981.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>After the practice session, O&#8217;Ward said \u201cEvery time we come here, if you gain a tenth (of a second), you gain six or seven spots \u2013 sometimes even more, Qualifying is probably going to be like that. It\u2019s a busy day. We\u2019ve made some good changes to the car. What we need to do now is make sure we follow the track to where it\u2019s going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Following O&#8217;Ward was Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Christian-Lundgaard\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Christian Lundgaard<\/strong><\/a> (01:09.4988) in his #45 Honda, Chip Ganassi Racing&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Alex-Palou\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Alex Palou<\/strong><\/a> (01:09.5213) in his #10, Team Penske&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Scott-McLaughlin\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Scott McLaughlin<\/strong><\/a> (01:09.5465) in his #3 Chevrolet and rounding out the Top 5 was another entry from the Rahal Letterman Lanigan camp of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Jack-Harvey\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Jack Harvey<\/strong><\/a> (01:09.5976).<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Talking about his practice run, Harvey said &#8220;Everyone knows I like this place, I just like being at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Everything about this place is cool. Naturally, I feel like I\u2019ve always gone well here. The attitude is, \u2018Let\u2019s leave no stone unturned,\u2019 as many times as we can. It\u2019s a nice start to the weekend, for sure.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Early during the 90-minute practice session the first drivers to take to the track were the rookies, who keep in mind are making their debut on the IMS road course led by Chip Ganassi&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Marcus-Armstrong\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Marcus Armstrong<\/strong> <\/a>(01:09.9771) which was good enough for P11 followed by Dale Coyne Racing&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Sting-Ray-Robb\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Sting Ray Robb<\/strong><\/a> (01:10.3928) P20, AJ Foyt Racing&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Benjamin-Pedersen\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Benjamin Pedersen<\/strong><\/a> (01:10.7691) P25 and Juncos Hollinger Racing&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.indycar.com\/Series\/IndyCar-Series\/Agustin-Canapino\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Agustin Canapino<\/strong><\/a> (01:10.9736) which put him P26 after the first session.<\/p>\n<p>Only <strong>Colton Herta <\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>Santino Ferrucci<\/strong>\u00a0at the start of the session and <strong>Scott Dixon<\/strong> towards the end developed any issues with their cars, but their crews were able to work out the problems and get them back out on the track.<\/p>\n<p>Later today, cars will be on track once more for a 45-minute practice session. After that, it is time to set the fastest lap possible as qualifying will finish off the day at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Up next: Practice 2 at 1:00 p.m EST on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.peacocktv.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Peacock<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<h5>Featured Image Credit: James Black\/Penske Entertainment<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The start of practice #1 for Saturday&#8217;s\u00a0GMR Grand Prix at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was anything but ordinary. The \ud83e\udd77 back at it again. #INDYCAR \/\/ @PatricioOWard pic.twitter.com\/oh5UTJlDGB &mdash; NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) May 12, 2023 With rain hitting the Indianapolis area overnight and early this morning a lot of teams were hesitant at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4580,"featured_media":14492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,1663],"tags":[1638,163,1627],"class_list":["post-14489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-indycar","category-ntt-indycar-series","tag-gmr-indy-grand-prix","tag-indycar","tag-pato-oward"],"modified_by":"Nathan Reynolds","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4580"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}