With heavy rain falling throughout the second practice, the Verizon IndyCar Series drivers made the decision to not practice despite the session not being canceled by series officials.
The weather forecast for the rest of the weekend is positive, with sun expected both Saturday for qualifying and Sunday for the race. With that said, teams felt the risk of tearing up equipment was not worth it.
“It’s really a team decision, really,” Josef Newgarden commented post-race. “The biggest thing is looks clear tomorrow and Sunday so there’s not a lot of point going out and practicing in trickier conditions, and wrecking racecars. I think more so for our team as we had a tough month of May, wrecked a lot of racecars and lost some cars. So, to be honest, we’re being a little more cautious. I don’t know why everybody else decided not to, but pretty much the same reason. There’s just no reason to go tear up a car.
“If it was going to rain all weekend, I bet you would have everyone out there, for sure. We’d want to be out there on the track learning.”
Juan Pablo Montoya led the morning session ahead of Simon Pagenaud and Newgarden.
