Romain Grosjean has built a lot of hype leading into the upcoming NTT IndyCar season and he started things off Friday on the highest note possible.
Grosjean paced the first of two practices for the series set at St. Petersburg with the second coming on Saturday. Colton Herta, Will Power, Simon Pagenaud and Graham Rahal rounded out the top five.
The quick time for the session was just over 61 seconds, coming in at 1:01.052 for the new driver of the Andretti Autosport No. 28 Honda.
Teams were, however, not allowed to use the red, alternate tires that Firestone is providing this season which are faster, but suffer from more tire wear.
Those tires will be able to be utilized on Saturday with Practice 2 coming at 8:00 a.m. CT and qualifying going down at 11:00 a.m. CT. The fastest times can be seen below and the full weekend slate can be seen here.
IndyCar Streets of St. Pete Practice 1 Results
1. Romain Grosjean, 1:01.0525
2. Colton Herta, 1:01.1567
3. Will Power, 1:01.2282
4. Simon Pagenaud, 1:01.3249
5. Graham Rahal, 1:01.3683
6. Alexander Rossi 1:01.4570
7. Jack Harvey, 1:01.4903
8. Scott McLaughlin, 1:01.5354
9. Rinus VeeKay, 1:01.5522
10. David Malukas (R), 1:01.5889
11. Helio Castroneves, 1:01.6086
12. Kyle Kirkwood (R), 1:01.6177
13. Devlin DeFrancesco, 1:01.6632
14. Josef Newgarden, 1:01.6903
15. Marcus Ericsson, 1:01.6922
16. Felix Rosenqvist, 1:01.7267
17. Alex Palou, 1:01.7267
18. Conor Daly, 1:01.7462
19. Takuma Sato, 1:01.7617
20. Scott Dixon, 1:01.7747
21. Pato O’Ward, 1:01.8297
22. Callum Ilott (R), 1:02.1578
23. Dalton Kellett, 1:02.2448
24. Jimmie Johnson, 1:02.4246
25. Christian Lundgaard (R), 1:02.5246
26. Tatiana Calderon (R), 1:03.7173
