By DAVE SKRETTA AP Sports Writer
INDIANAPOLIS — Josef Newgarden spent the final 2-hour practice for the Indianapolis 500 on Friday carving through a track full of cars.
He’ll have to do the same thing when it counts on Sunday.
The two-time defending Indy 500 winner, who will start in the last row as punishment for an illegally modified part found during qualifying, had the fastest lap of the 2-hour final practice on Carb Day at 225.687 mph. Teammate Will Power, who will also start at the back, was fifth while fellow Team Penske driver Scott McLaughlin was just 27th on the chart.
“We have the tools and the people to battle to the front,” Newgarden said, “which is what we plan to do.”
McLaughlin, whose car did not have the offending part and escaped Team Penske punishments, will start 10th after wrecking his primary car in practice last Sunday. His fastest lap in the final session of practice was just 221.675 mph.
“I know we have fast cars,” McLaughlin said. “Everyone feels that way, as well.”
The final opportunity to put cars on the track before race day, when a grandstand sellout is expected to produce a crowd of more than 350,000 people, turned out to be an eventful one for Rahal Letterman Lanigan and several other teams.
Graham Rahal, who struggled just to make the 33-card field, only got about 40 minutes of practice in before a mechanical issue produced a puff of smoke and fluid out the back of the No. 15 car. He wound up going to the garage area early.
“It just seems like we’ve always been behind and things keep happening,” said Rahal, whose team was still trying to diagnose the problem. “We can’t get caught up here. The car was better today, a lot better. … It is what it is at this stage. You just got to go.”
Two-time winner Takuma Sato, who will start for RLL in the middle of the front row, also failed to make it to the end. He pulled his car behind a wall and waited for time to run out on the session before his team began to troubleshoot his problems.
Ryan Hunter-Reay’s session quite literally went up in smoke. Fire erupted out the back of the No. 23 car, which had been eighth-quickest in practice, and the 2014 race winner had to quickly escape from the vehicle as the emergency crew arrived.
“I had a methanol fire back in 2003, and I just remember what went on there and that same kind of feeling. So after I felt a liquid or whatever it was – it could have been some kind of fire-retardant liquid – it just started to smoke more and more.”
Hunter-Reay wasn’t sure the extent of the damage to the rear of the car or what it could mean for his race.
“I hope it’s not a hybrid deal because Jack (Harvey) earlier in the week had a hybrid melt down on him,” Hunter-Reay said. “But yeah, that caught my attention. When it fills up with smoke in fourth gear, something is seriously wrong.”
Rookie pole-sitter Robert Shwartzman spent long stretches in his pit box as Prema Racing tried to get his car working better in traffic; Colton Herta, who went to a backup car after his crash last Saturday, had trouble with his brake systems; Ed Carpenter’s hybrid system had to be replaced because it wasn’t working properly; and 2016 winner Alexander Rossi went to the garage just 30 minutes into practice because of water that suddenly began leaking from the back of his car.
The result was a busy Gasoline Alley just 48 hours before the green flag for “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”
“I think the car has been good and we were happy with where we were in practice Monday,” said Rossi, who will start on the outside of the fourth row. “But that’s what Carb Day is for, to find issues like this.”
NEWGARDEN BEATS POWER IN PIT-STOP CHALLENGE
Newgarden beat Power in the final of the Indianapolis 500 pit-stop challenge on Friday, giving the whole of Team Penske something to feel good about after a trying week.
In the decisive matchup, Newgarden’s team stopped the clock in 10.263 seconds and Power in 10.503, giving the two-time Indy 500 winner his second consecutive pit-stop championship and Team Penske its 20th dating back to its first in 1981.
“These are the unsung heroes of this race. They’re risking it every time we’re coming in,” said Newgarden, who will start 32nd on Sunday as he chases an unprecedented three-peat. “It’s not easy to do this job. They work on their cars all day, all night, and then they have to come out and perform in these moments, and they have to perform on Sunday.”
The pit-stop title was the third overall for Newgarden, putting him in a tie with Al Unser Jr. for fourth-most by any driver.
“It helps you win the Indy 500,” he said of the quick pit stops. “Everything has to be perfect and this is a big part of it.”
Newgarden, whose team won $50,000, beat Pato O’Ward of Arrow McLaren in the semifinals in a rematch of last year’s head-to-head final. Power won his semifinal matchup with Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon, whose team won two years ago.
“After the week we’ve had, all three cars are ready to go out there and take this win,” said Caitlyn Brown, one of the Team Penske crew members on Newgarden’s car, who two years ago became the first female over-the-wall crew member at the Indy 500.
“Winning this competition only powers us to go out there and take it,” she said. “Starting from the back doesn’t mean anything.”
WIENERMOBILES PUT ON RIVETING RACE
Give the Borg-Wiener Trophy at Indianapolis Motor Speedway to the Wienermobile affectionately known as Slaw Dog.
In a down-to-the-wire race among the six iconic Wienermobiles that serve as goodwill ambassadors for Oscar Mayer, the hot dog-on-wheels representing the Southeast proved to be the big dog on Carb Day.
It made a dramatic pass of the Wienermobile repping Chicago at the finish line to win the inaugural Wienie 500 on Friday.
The margin was about a half a bun.
“You are standing in a moment in hot dog history right now,” Sarah Oney, who was co-piloting the Wienermobile representing New York with Connor Wolff, told The Associated Press. “This is the first-ever time we have honestly had all six Wienermobiles together and especially at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.”
It was the definition of a wiener-take-all race, too: The driver and co-pilot of the No. 3 dog, who managed to roast the rest of the Wienermobiles on a cool, sunny afternoon, got to stick around for the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500.
The Wienermobiles have been around since 1936 as a promotional vehicle for Oscar Mayer – not to be confused with Louis Meyer, the first three-time winner of the Indy 500. They travel around the country, logging about 20,000 miles annually, though none were probably as important to the hotdoggers on board as the 5 miles they drove on Friday.
Oney and Wolff jumped into the lead when the green flag flew at the historic yard of bricks, and the six Wienermobiles slowly picked up speed until they reached about 65 mph. They were right in each other’s grills down the backstretch, and swapped the lead among themselves several times until the second of two laps, when the No. 4 dog led the field out of Turn 2.
That’s when smoke began pouring from its rear, and that dog was cooked.
The Wienermobile wearing No. 1 assumed the lead as the field headed onto the front stretch, and a crowd of nearly 80,000 fans who had just watched the final practice for the 109th running of the Indianapolis 500 was standing and cheering.
That’s when the Wienermobile from the Southeast, which had doggedly hung around the lead for most of the race, made its big move. It passed the the Wienermobile repping Chicago just in time to relish in the sweet taste of victory.
It might have been the fastest Wieners have gone since Joey Chestnut’s heyday on Coney Island.
“The Indy 500 marks the unofficial kickoff of summer and the start of hot dog season,” said Kelsey Rice, brand communications director at Chicago-based Oscar Mayer. “It’s only fitting that we bring a race of epic proportions to the Speedway and celebrate a timeless tradition: delicious meats and a little friendly competition to kick off a summer of wieners.”
AWARD WINNERS
Earlier in the day, Chip Ganassi Racing manager Barry Wanser and broadcast statistician Russ Thompson were given the Robin Miller Award, which honors unheralded people who have devoted a significant portion of their lives to IndyCar.
The award is named after Miller, a longtime motorsports writer who died in 2021.
Pat Caporali, the lead communications representative for tiremaker Firestone, was given the Jim Chapman Award for excellence in public relations. Chapman was a legendary PR executive who worked with Babe Ruth, among others.
