On a perfect day for running, Conor Daly led the opening test day at IMS with a speed of 225.394 mph. Helio Castroneves and Takuma Sato were second and third quickest. Sato, in third, was just 0.1 seconds behind Daly. The trio are all part time drivers. Sato and Castroneves drive only in the 500.

Daly cautioned everyone to not read too much into the results.

“There are several cars that aren’t running their race cars yet,” Daly said. “It’s just testing; we can’t overreact to test results. But honestly, every time we went out there, we did seem to be pretty quick, which is good. Our mission this month (May) is one day at a time.”

Daly led the pack for a while in the morning session as well. The fast times were with a tow. Kyle Kirkwood was the fastest without a tow on Tuesday.

The day started under a cloud cover with a bit of a chill in the air, but by noon blue sky and sunshine broke through. While the temperature didn’t rise much, it was pleasant and great for running. Wednesday’ s forecast calls for even cooler temperatures. Rain starting tonight could continue into the morning, possibly delaying the 10 am scheduled start.

All rooki3es- Dennis Hauger, Jacob Abel, Mick Schumacher, and Caio Collet- passed the Rookie Orientation Program.

Ryan Hunter-Reay, Helio Castroneves, Jack Harvey, and Ed Carpenter completed their refresher laps. Katherine Legge had gearbox control issues and did not turn a lap. She will have an opportunity Wednesday during the noon-1 pm lunch break to complete the refresher phases.

Notes

There is always something special about the first spring day of practice at IMS. For me it marks the official end of winter, and a promise of warm days and race cars ahead. It is part of the circadian rhythms of anyone born n Central Indiana.

I don’t know what Arrow McLaren was aiming for with this look, but it appeared to be some sort of camo. Each car had the words “Test Spec” on the side.

In addition to Daly, the Team Penske cars looked strong today. It was nice to see Will Power on top of the pylon for a bit this afternoon, but Andretti looked a little off pace. Chip Ganassi racing did not run their speedway cars today.

Tomorrow, I will be on site in the afternoon. Look for a story mid-morning about 1956 500 in honor of its 70th anniversary.