HMD Motorsports’ Nolan Siegel fastest at Barber in Indy Nxt practice

Photo: Karl Zemlin

HMD Motorsports’ Nolan Siegel was fastest across Indy Nxt’s two practice sessions at Barber Motorsports Park.

First practice session took place on Friday, and HMD’s Christian Rasmussen set the pace by 0.1087 seconds over team-mate Kyffin Simpson.

The 1m11.4618s laptime that put him on top was faster than the series’ track record set by Linus Lundqvist in qualifying at Barber two years ago, but did not count as a new record due to those only being taken from qualifying and race sessions.

HMD was the team to beat on Friday, with its drivers locking out the top four positions. Nolan Siegel and Toby Sowery were third and fourth fastest, with the latter making his first appearance in the series since 2021.

Andretti Autosport’s Hunter McElrea was best of the rest, 0.3279s off the pace in fifth place, with his team-mate James Roe Jr almost another three tenths of a second further back in sixth. The top 13 were covered by a second on pace, with Andretti’s Louis Foster occupying 13th place.

The track was considerably faster in FP2 on Saturday morning, with six drivers breaking the 1m11s barrier and, therefore, setting a new unofficial track record.

McElrea topped the times for the first half of the session with a lap that was already four tenths of a second faster than Rasmussen’s best effort from Friday.

With 15 minutes of practice remaining, several drivers improved their laptimes. Rasmussen and Siegel were the first into the 1m10s. HMD’s points leader Danial Frost followed them with a best lap of 1m10.9362s, which he would then lower another tenth to conclude the session in third place, just 0.0076s ahead of Simpson.

A last-minute 1m10.6303s effort from Siegel put him on top of the times as he bettered Rasmussen’s previous benchmark by 0.0727s.

McElrea was again the fastest non-HMD driver in fifth place, 0.2703s slower than Siegel’s fastest lap.

Free practice results