Dixon quickest in final practice, Newgarden penalized

Dixon lapped the 14-turn, 2.439-mile IMS road course in 1m10.9851s in the 30-minute session, which acts as the warm-up for tomorrow’s race.

The session took on more importance after a remarkable qualifying session beforehand, in which title contenders Alex Palou (Ganassi) and Josef Newgarden (Penske) could only manage eighth and 19^th on the grid respectively.

Firestone has brought a harder compound this weekend than it did for May’s event here, which caused chaos for some – most notably Team Penske, with Scott McLaughlin the best of its runners in 11^th (although he’ll start 10^th), with Will Power in 16^th.

“Basically the red tire [alternate] is a primary from another circuit,” explained Dixon.

Newgarden’s day turned even more sour when he was given a 10-minute penalty in this session for missing the driver weigh-in. He responded by going fastest with 1m11.7878s after 10 of his 20 minutes available.

Former race winner here Rinus VeeKay beat that with 1m11.4844s for Ed Carpenter Racing, before Callum Ilott set 1m11.4315s and then Palou grabbed P1 with 1m11.1365s.

Dixon – who will start 15^th after also struggling in qualifying – went to the top of the timesheet with four minutes to go with 1m10.9851s, ending the session fastest ahead of Palou, McLaughlin, Illot, Kyle Kirkwood (who’ll start 13^th for Andretti Autosport), VeeKay, Colton Herta (starting 11^th for Andretti) and Marcus Ericsson (Ganassi – who suffered more clutch issues in this session).

Polewinner Graham Rahal was only 17^th in this session.

Tomorrow’s race starts at 2:00pm ET.