Kyle Kirkwood made his intentions clear for the upcoming race weekend by setting the fastest time on Friday. The Andretti Global driver topped the charts in the first practice session for the Honda Indy 200, nearly two-tenths of a second quicker than Pato O’Ward in second and Alex Palou in third.

Drivers quickly discovered that the track was still very slick, in part due to the warm conditions. Many had moments during the session: Jacob Abel spun exiting Turn 1, Scott McLaughlin went off in Turn 4, Nolan Siegel ran into the gravel in the final corner, Colton Herta went off in Turn 1 as well, and Pato O’Ward spun in the penultimate turn.

After a relatively quiet start to the session, it was Christian Lundgaard who, after twenty minutes, became the first driver to set a truly competitive lap, edging out teammate O’Ward and Josef Newgarden.

Three minutes later, the red flag came out for the first time. It was triggered by David Malukas, who lost control of his car due to oversteer in Turn 9 and backed into the tire barrier.

Lundgaard remained on top of the combined timesheets until Marcus Ericsson narrowly beat his time with five minutes remaining. Three minutes later, Will Power went a hundredth quicker to take over the top spot. Moments later, the session was brought to an end when Colton Herta spun off in Turn 6 and backed into the wall. Herta was able to continue and return to the pits for repairs.

After the combined session, the field was split into two groups for qualifying simulations with reduced traffic. Interestingly, the first group turned out to be the quicker of the two, with Kyle Kirkwood setting the fastest time of the day, ahead of Pato O’Ward and Alex Palou.

Josef Newgarden posted the best time in the second group but was still slower than the entire top three from the first group. In a surprise performance, Kyffin Simpson took second in the second group, ahead of Herta, who bounced back strongly after his earlier incident.

The red flag was shown one more time during the second group’s session. Felix Rosenqvist was instructed by the Meyer Shank Racing team to park his car in Turn 4 after the team detected a voltage issue in the hybrid system of the #60 machine.

Track action for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio continues on Saturday with the second practice session at 10:35 AM ET, followed by qualifying at 2:35 PM ET.

Full results of the 1st free practice session on Mid-Ohio