For the fourth straight road and street course, Scott McLaughlin was the quickest Chevrolet-powered driver during the first practice, with Arrow McLaren teammates Christian Lundgaard in the No. 7 VELO Arrow McLaren Chevrolet and Pato O\u2019Ward also had top ten pace in the first practice on the 1.968-mile, 11-turn, Long Beach street circuit.<\/p>\n
For the 2026 NTT INDYCAR SERIES season, the first practice on the road and street courses is split into three portions, with the entire field running the first forty minutes, and the field split in two for a pair of 12-minute sessions.<\/p>\n
Chevrolet-powered drivers took six of the top 10 spots in the first 40 minutes, with drivers utilizing the Primary Firstone Firehawk racing tires (Black), with Pato O\u2019Ward in the No. 5 Arrow McLaren Chevrolet leading the way for Team Chevy. McLaughlin, David Malukas in the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, Christian Lundgaard in the No. 7 VELO Arrow McLaren Chevrolet, Alexander Rossi in the No. 20 ECR Liquid Science Orange Chevrolet, and Josef Newgarden in the No. 2 Astemo Team Penske Chevrolet joined the Mexican driver.<\/p>\n
When the first half of the field put on the Alternate Firestone Firehawk racing tires (Red), McLaughlin was immediately quick, setting a lap of 67.6053 seconds on his first hot lap. The Kiwi was on his second hot lap when the rear end of his No. 3 AAA Travel Team Penske Chevrolet stepped out under braking in Turn 9, tagging the tire barriers and ending his session.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like I got a denied downshift,\u201d said McLaughlin. \u201cIt was a bit unfortunate, going in there, you\u2019re committing pretty high. Looking back on it now, I probably should have. Looking back on it now, I probably didn\u2019t have as much time because it was sliding for a long time. I grabbed a gear and it just locked the rear tires and I was a bit of a passenger. The car was super good. I was just trying to test those AAA tow trucks and figure if we could get some help; they were right there on the job. Excited for the AAA Travel Team Chevy. We\u2019ve got a rocket ship this weekend; it\u2019s just a matter of putting it together.\u201d<\/p>\n
After going sixth quickest in the first session on Blacks, Lundgaard was third best in his session on the Reds. Joining Lundgaard in the top five in the second 12-minute session was Alexander Rossi in the No. 20 ECR Liquid Science Orange Chevrolet. Malukas confirmed that Team Penske had speed, setting the quickest times in the first two sectors of his best lap before encountering traffic.<\/p>\n
GM PR<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the fourth straight road and street course, Scott McLaughlin was the quickest Chevrolet-powered driver during the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271034,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[30294,116405,117736,65321,87390,131,133,132,9027,425,19930,117738,117739],"class_list":{"0":"post-274403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-aaa","9":"tag-alexander-rossi","10":"tag-chevrolet","11":"tag-indycar","12":"tag-indycar-series","13":"tag-long-beach","14":"tag-long-beach-headlines","15":"tag-long-beach-news","16":"tag-racing","17":"tag-series","18":"tag-speed","19":"tag-team-chevy","20":"tag-team-penske"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}