McElrea fastest in Indy Nxt’s second Road America practice

Photo: James Black

Hunter McElrea went quickest in Indy Nxt FP2 at Road America with a laptime three seconds under the series’ old track record. 

The Andretti Autosport driver topped the order just before red flags were brought out with three-and-a-half minutes left on the clock. Track action would not be resumed, so McElrea ended the session quickest with a 1m48.8556s laptime.

Nolan Siegel had spent most of the second half of the FP2 in first place and the only driver to lap sub-1m50s. However, with six minutes remaining laptimes began to tumble again.

Louis Foster was briefly quickest before team-mate McElrea jumped to the top of the order. In total 16 drivers had gone sub-1m50s before the red flags appeared.

Matteo Nannini had just improved on his personal best to go fourth quickest when he ran off and went into the barriers. There was limited damage to the car, but it couldn’t be recovered in time to resume the session. 

Foster ended practice second quickest, 0.1664 second behind McElrea, with Danial Frost in third. 

The session got off to a slow start. Christian Rasmussen got onto the grass before making contact with Rasmus Lindh. Rasmussen was able to get back to the pits with damage to his car, but Lindh limped to a stop on track, prompting the first red flag interruption of the day.

Lindh spent the rest of FP2 in the pits with a fuel pressure issue, which Rasmussen did manage to go back out and place seventh overall, just behind Jacob Abel. 

There were a number of other off-track excursions as drivers found the limit of the resurfaced Road America circuit, but there were no other barrier incidents.

Free practice results