Long Beach Indy Lights Friday Practice Notes

By Patrick Stephan of TrackSideOnline.com presented by Honda Racing/HPD

Here is the time sheet for the first (and only for today) IndyLights Series presented by Cooper Tires practice session. Max Chilton was quickest in the session with a 1:14.181 lap time on the 1.968 mile Long Beach course.

There was one incident in the session as Ethan Ringel got in to the tires at turn 8.  He sent one of those barrier tires rolling down the track, and also damaged the front suspsension on his Schmidt Peterson entry.

Following Chilton on the final time sheet was Spencer Pigot, Kyle Kaiser, Felix Serralles and Jack Harvey.  Ed Jones who dominated the St. Pete weekend was just 7th quick in the 12 car field.

The track records for Indy Lights here are 1:12.9374 (quals – Carlos Munoz, 2013) and 1:13.8995 (race – Conor Daly, 2011).

Considering this a new car and we saw a similar gap to even last year’s quals in the Verizon IndyCar Series session, that makes me think the track just hasn’t gripped up yet.

Ok, going to head out and talk to some of the drivers about the session.  More to report in a bit.

P
No Name FTime Diff Laps FL
1 14 Max Chilton 1:14.181 0.000 22 22
2 12 Spencer Pigot 1:14.429 0.2474 23 21
3 18 Kyle Kaiser 1:14.513 0.3318 22 19
4 4 Felix Serralles 1:14.551 0.3698 22 21
5 42 Jack Harvey 1:14.630 0.4485 19 19
6 83 Matthew Brabham 1:14.804 0.6226 20 20
7 11 Ed Jones 1:14.877 0.6959 22 21
8 77 Scott Anderson 1:15.076 0.8952 18 18
9 5 Juan Piedrahita 1:15.395 1.2134 22 20
10 7 RC Enerson 1:15.682 1.5007 16 14
11 51 Shelby Blackstock 1:15.741 1.5596 18 18
12 71 Ethan Ringel 1:16.867 2.6855 13 13