Dixon paces Top 12, huge save by Johnson but misses cut

Two-time Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato was the first out on track and hit 232.165mph on his opening lap in the Dale Coyne Racing with RWR-Honda, which dropped to 231.450mph by his fourth and final lap, to set an average of 231.670mph.

The sole Team Penske-Chevrolet representative in the Top 12, 2018 winner Will Power danced up to the Turn 1 wall twice on his run and said afterward the balance of the car wasn’t as good as in yesterday’s qualifying session, and he ended up behind Sato.

Scott Dixon slammed in a 233.907 for his opener, and even his third lap was 233.616, before he had to lift in Turn 2 on Lap 4 and lost 1mph. Nonetheless his average of 233.510 looked exceedingly strong.

Romain Grosjean, Andretti Autosport-Honda’s only hope, produced an excellent 233.270mph, his fastest lap of the week, but lost almost 2.5mph across the four laps, although his average still left him comfortably ahead of Sato and Power.

Marcus Ericsson produced three 233mph laps to make himself second fastest at the time, although this looked briefly under threat when hometown hero Ed Carpenter delivered 234.244 on his opener. However, he had to pedal it on Laps 2 and 4 and his average only just stayed over the 233 barrier.

Ganassi rookie Jimmie Johnson had a huge moment and great recovery at Turn 1 on his opening lap, but kept his head to deliver a fine 232.9 next time by. However, the speed dissipated rapidly on Laps 3 and 4 and he wound up at the bottom of the speed chart. Nonetheless, he had covered himself in glory by saving the biggest non-crash of the session.

His teammates Alex Palou and Tony Kanaan produced 233.3 and 233.0 averages, both comfortably ahead of Felix Rosenqvist of Arrow McLaren SP-Chevy who rolled out 10^th.

Rosenqvist’s teammate Pato O’Ward was over 0.6sec faster than Rosenqvist but was only sixth, meaning he was on the bubble of graduating to the Fast 6 when yesterday’s pacesetter Rinus VeeKay headed out in the second ECR-Chevy. The Dutch youngster delivered a 234.099mph for an opener and kept his head and strong pace to deliver second fastest time, less than 0.1mph behind Dixon.

Advancing to the Firestone Fast Six

Missing the cut