Pocono: Practice 2 times

In the final practice at Pocono Raceway before Sunday's race, Marco Andretti once again topped the times in race trim but there were also encouraging signs from the Honda camp.

Andrew Lewin_1

06 Jul 2013

Marco Andretti continued to be unstoppable at the 2.5-mile Pocono tri-oval at Lake Pond in Pennsylvania, capping his earlier time-topping outings in testing, practice and qualifying by finishing on top in the last track time before Sunday afternoon's Pocono IndyCar 400 event.

His lap of 41.0734s (219.12mph) in race trim was slower than his earlier record-setting qualifying pace and only five hundredths of a second faster than AJ Foyt Racing's Takuma Sato, who just pipped Andretti's team mate James Hinchcliffe to second spot in the timings.

In fact it was a more encouraging session for the Honda camp as a whole, with the two leading Ganassi cars of Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti also making it into the top six ahead of Ed Carpenter. Whether this represents a true up-tick in form for the Honda-powered cars for tomorrow's race remains to be seen, however.

EJ Viso and Alex Tagliani didn't take part in the half hour session after crashing their race cars in qualifying earlier in the day. Ryan Briscoe also did not take part as he was not present at Pocono on Saturday, instead competing for Level 5 Motorsports in the American Le Mans Series Northeast Grand Prix race at Lime Rock Park in Lakeville, Connecticut.

Practice 2 times

1. #25 Marco Andretti Andretti (C) 219.12mph 41.0734s (21 laps)
2. #14 Takuma Sato AJ Foyt (H) 218.814mph 41.1308s + 0.0574s (34 laps)
3. #27 James Hinchcliffe Andretti (C) 218.759mph 41.1412s + 0.0678s (34 laps)
4. #9 Scott Dixon Ganassi (H) 218.545mph 41.1814s + 0.1080s (36 laps)
5. #10 Dario Franchitti Ganassi (H) 218.296mph 41.2285s + 0.1551s (28 laps)
6. #20 Ed Carpenter Ed Carpenter (C) 218.099mph 41.2657s + 0.1923s (31 laps)
7. #77 Simon Pagenaud Schmidt (H) 217.845mph 41.3138s + 0.2404s (32 laps)
8. #11 Tony Kanaan KV Racing (C) 217.762mph 41.3295s + 0.2561s (35 laps)
9. #1 Ryan Hunter-Reay Andretti (C) 217.597mph 41.3608s + 0.2874s (34 laps)
10. #3 Helio Castroneves Penske (C) 217.575mph 41.3651s + 0.2917s (37 laps)
11. #12 Will Power Penske (C) 217.285mph 41.4202s + 0.3468s (31 laps)
12. #83 Charlie Kimball Ganassi (H) 217.272mph 41.4227s + 0.3493s (29 laps)
13. #55 Tristan Vautier Schmidt (H) 217.113mph 41.4530s + 0.3796s (36 laps)
14. #67 Josef Newgarden SFHR (H) 217.022mph 41.4704s + 0.3970s (32 laps)
15. #15 Graham Rahal RLL (H) 216.653mph 41.5411s + 0.4677s (35 laps)
16. #7 Sebastien Bourdais Dragon (C) 216.073mph 41.6525s + 0.5791s (30 laps)
17. #18 Pippa Mann Dale Coyne (H) 215.937mph 41.6788s + 0.6054s (27 laps)
18. #19 Justin Wilson Dale Coyne (H) 215.822mph 41.7010s + 0.6276s (30 laps)
19. #16 James Jakes RLL (H) 215.597mph 41.7446s + 0.6712s (32 laps)
20. #6 Sebastian Saavedra Dragon (C) 215.570mph 41.7497s + 0.6763s (32 laps)
21. #78 Simona De Silvestro KV Racing (C) 215.289mph 41.8043s + 0.7309s (38 laps)
22. #5 EJ Viso Andretti-HVM (C) No time
23. #4 Ryan Briscoe Panther (C) No time
24. #98 Alex Tagliani BHA (H) No time