Indy 500 Open Test Day Two: Two crashes as boost is turned up

Written by Archie O’Reilly

The 2025 Indianapolis 500 Open Test has concluded at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS), with Day Two seeing two crashes as teams were granted qualifying boost settings for the early part of the day.

Attention now turns to two further races - at Barber Motorsports Park and on the road course at IMS - before Indy 500 practice commences. Here is how the final day of the test unfolded…

Crash-impacted high-boost running

Amid the introduction of the hybrid system, IndyCar took the decision to grant teams two-and-a-half hours of high-boost running to kick off Thursday. Traditionally, this added power is only granted to teams on Fast Friday ahead of the qualifying weekend in May.

This move comes amid the introduction of the hybrid system for the first time in an Indy 500, granting teams the ability to get a read on balance shifts with the boosts and practice hybrid use in qualifying trim.

The session was ultimately headlined by a pair of crashes, first for Kyle Larson as the NASCAR Cup Series star runs for Arrow McLaren again, then for two-time Indy 500 winner Takuma Sato in his Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing (RLL) machine.

Larson’s incident came as he found himself up too high in Turn 1, pancaking the wall with his right-side tyres and finding himself a passenger as he made a second impact - albeit not major as he scrubbed a lot of speed - with the Turn 2 SAFER barrier.

It was a first crash on the IMS oval in 2025 and a first for Larson in his IndyCar venture. He suggested he was “happy to crash my first Indy car and live through it” and indicated it was all that he expected. Crashing at Indy is an inevitability for all drivers - a part of the experience.

The damage to his No.17 Chevy was not as sizable as it could have been given the boost was on, but the team nonetheless decided not to rush repairs and Larson did not emerge again in the second session of the day. He will return in May still in search of a more comfortable feeling back in the Indy car.

Shortly after the resumption, Sato also connected with the Turn 1 wall before coming to rest in Turn 2. But the damage was much more significant.

Maybe indicating Sato’s over-pushing, he recorded his quickest Turn 1 trap speed (237.151 miles per hour) on the lap of the crash. And making the incident all the more brutal, the Japanese veteran destroyed what looked to be the fastest car on track.

Driving the No.75 Honda for RLL, the ever-exhilarating Sato delivered the fastest no-tow speed of the high-boost session by 1.101 mph with a 232.565 mph lap average. It was a time good enough for second overall despite an inundation of tow-aided speeds.

“Heartbreak,” was an apt description from Sato in his broadcast interview. He emerged gingerly from the car initially but suffered only “little bruises and little pain” and was promptly seen and released from the medical centre.

His car was wrecked, though, with a mangled rear, cracked sidepods and suspension extremely ajar. That was also the end of Sato’s running for the test.

So it was Sato who ended on top of the no-tow chart, which is the most representative look at qualifying performance, albeit only 27 of the 34 drivers registered a no-tow lap amid a frenzy of cars searching for clean track.

Kyle Kirkwood was second for Andretti Global with a 231.464 mph average lap speed, with Team Penske’s Scott McLaughlin, RLL rookie Louis Foster, Chip Ganassi Racing (CGR) sophomore Kyffin Simpson and Andretti’s Colton Herta also breaching the 230 mph barrier.

All three Penske cars were in the no-tow top 10 after locking out last year’s front row, with two-time defending Indy 500 winner Josef Newgarden seventh and 2018 victor Will Power ninth. Pato O’Ward was ninth for Arrow McLaren and Graham Rahal 10th amid solid improvement for an RLL team that has fought to just make the field the past two seasons.

McLaughlin led the less-relevant overall speed chart ahead of Sato’s impressive no-tow time, Power, CGR-allied Felix Rosenqvist for Meyer Shank Racing (MSR) and the CGR pair of Álex Palou and Scott Dixon.

Boost session fun but frustrating

Drivers were pleased that IndyCar granted them the opportunity to get an early read of how the heavier car handles within qualifying configuration. But there was irritation at how challenging it was to get a clear no-tow lap.

“It’s like having a crazy Fast Friday without nobody policing and everybody wanting to get clear laps,” Palou said.

Kirkwood shared that annoyance.

“Sometimes we don’t know what people are thinking out there,” he said. “There’s no cars on track… there goes one guy right in front of the next. Some people aren’t thinking. I don’t know if they do it on purpose or they generally don’t know. It can get very annoying.

“Watching it out there, it doesn’t seem very sportsmanlike.”

The two-and-a-half-hour session meant it was a heavily-condensed version of Fast Friday. Delays due to incidents only punctuated that time further.

“I felt like the high-boost session was a bit of a crapshoot,” McLaughlin said. “Couple of yellows. When the track got better, it was a bit dirty from some of the shunts as well. Then everyone was trying to cram a lot in 40 minutes.”

McLaughlin felt certain teams were particularly mismanaging the gaps in which they fed drivers into.

“A couple of the new teams - you can pick who they are - rolled out in some pretty peculiar spots,” he said. “‘Oh, somebody is not going to be happy with you.’ It was interesting to watch. Actually, one of those new teams pulled out in front of me. I was a little pissed.

“Overall, you understand everyone’s in the same boat. You can only be so sportsmanlike to a point. You’ve got to get going. Once the time came down and the crashes happened, I knew it was going to be a bit of a crapshoot.

“Kudos to IndyCar for giving us the opportunity to run the high boost. Weird running it now. Super weird. But it was cool.”

The high-boost session allowed a first gauge on whether the additional weight would have an impact on qualifying speeds and whether the hybrid boost would be at all influential.

“I expected to have slower speeds, honestly,” Palou said. “We saw 232s… I think that’s pretty good. If it was qualifying day, we would have seen even better speeds. Driver feel-wise, it doesn’t really change.

“I think it’s just tougher now to make a good, clean four laps, while in the past we’ve seen it’s been pretty easy to just be consistent. Now, there was many more people struggling to make a good, consistent four-lap run.”

Kirkwood’s view aligns with Palou’s but he does believe there has been an increased risk-reward factor.

“It was faster than we anticipated, which is a positive thing,” he said. “We were anticipating it being quite a bit slower because you can only use [the hybrid boost] once; you’re not going to regen anywhere in a qualy sim. If anything, it’s hurting your speed with the added weight.

“It doesn’t feel anything crazy. I just say with the added weight, people are going to be a lot more scared to trim to the level they have in the past. You saw guys put it in the wall. That’s just because it’s hard to drive now.

“Qualy sims at the level we did now compared to last year were much, much harder. It was not the same qualt performance we would have had in previous years. The weight is definitely playing a factor in that. It’s more sketchy, for sure.”

It was nigh on impossible for teams to complete a full four-lap qualifying simulation. But the priority was just to get an initial feel without going all-out.

“We didn’t throw everything to the wall,” McLaughlin said. “I don’t think anyone would have. It was a good read with a heavier car. The biggest thing that has changed now is the heaviness of the car. It’s very different.

“It feels weird… not weird but just feels different to usual.”

Early hybrid conclusions at Indy

There have been mixed feelings about the hybrid’s impact at IMS in these early stages. More of the talk has been about the altered balance courtesy of the added weight than the boost the system actually offers.

“It’s tough,” Palou said. “I would say the weight makes it tougher to drive, which then I think it’s not easier to pass with the weight that we have. In the past two or three years, it was super easy if you were comfortable with your car. Now, even if you are comfortable and you have a really good car, it’s very easy to do a mistake.

“I don’t think the weight helps. But I think the weight helps because it’s so difficult that it creates opportunities.”

McLaughlin is enjoying the process of getting used to something that feels new.

“The car is certainly different,” he said. “Speaking to a lot of the drivers, we all concur the same thoughts: it’s different. It’s fine - fun to get used to and understand it. Qualifying is going to be proper in terms of just what you need to do on the lap and thinking about what the car’s doing, the degradation of the tyres with the heavier car. It’s going to be a lot of fun.”

Palou agrees that qualifying will be interesting, with cards being kept close to the teams’ and drivers’ chests in terms of their deployment strategies of the hybrid boost.

“We’ve seen a lot of people doing very different stuff,” Palou said. “We still don’t know what’s best. We need to analyse and see what the drivers from our team have done differently one to the other and see what’s fastest. You can do many different stuff.

“There’s crazy ways to do qualifying. Then for the race, it’s actually a big boost. It just gives you enough that you’re in the lead, maybe you can keep it on the lead for one lap, then obviously you need to recharge. Probably you get passed then.

“It’s good enough that you can pass. You can pass when you’re fourth to third or fifth to fourth when the tyres are good. Then when you have no tyres, it’s pretty tough.”

Both Palou and McLaughlin agreed that setup changes made to try and improve the cars remain as predictable as they have been in previous years.

“When we started [the test] with our last year car, it wasn’t behaving as it was last year,” Palou said. “So we had to make a couple of adjustments. But the changes we were making, they were behaving the same, in a consistent way.”

All-car running completes the test

After a two-hour break for cars to be switched back into race configuration, a three-hour final all-car session rounded out the test with very little drama.

The biggest moment came as Rinus VeeKay’s No.18 Dale Coyne Racing (DCR) machine - out of fuel - slowed in Turn 2 during a pack run. O’Ward reacted exceptionally to avoid running into the back of the Dutchman, with AJ Foyt Racing’s Santino Ferrucci saving a big wobble in avoidance and MSR one-off, four-time Indy 500 winner Hélio Castroneves, dipping low on the backstretch.

Otherwise, it was three hours of consistent race running, with crucial traffic running in hybrid configuration undergone. The speed charts are not most relevant but do showcase the cars that have speed and elicit confidence in traffic running.

It was a strong afternoon for CGR and its allied cars in the MSR stable. Palou notched the quickest time of the session (223.993 mph), with CGR an example of many of the teams mimicking race situations with their multiple cars within the pack.

“I felt good,” Palou said. “I didn’t feel amazing. I think it was quite tough to pass. During testing, it always depends on your fuel, your tyres. Sometimes you go out on tyres that are 10 laps old, you cannot move. Suddenly you go out on new tyres and you’re like King Kong out there. It’s tough to take a lot of conclusions. But I felt really good in traffic.”

Rosenqvist was second for MSR, with Castroneves and Dixon sixth and seventh. Simpson and MSR’s Marcus Armstrong rounded out the top 12.

Kirkwood, winner of the most recent race at Long Beach, was third on the speed charts in the final session, followed by Newgarden and Juncos Hollinger Racing’s Conor Daly, who along with O’Ward were the only Chevy-powered cars in the top 12 of the closing session.

Rahal and Marco Andretti rounded out the top 10 for their respective family teams.

“It was the best initial test that I’ve ever had by a good margin,” Kirkwood said of his run. “We were really quick on no-tow speeds, race trim and qualy trim. We were really racy with some cars there. If you’re up front, I felt like we were one of the best that could be in that top-three range. We were extremely happy with today.”

The test concluded with a total of 5804 laps logged across the two days. Simpson was the most productive with 265 laps run, valuably followed by Robert Shwartzman (262) as he gears up for his oval debut for PREMA Racing, who have also never raced on an oval.

Herta (234), McLaughlin (220), Andretti (213), Arrow McLaren’s Christian Lundgaard (211), DCR rookie Jacob Abel (211), Power (201) and Dixon (200) all broke the 200-lap mark.

On the opposite end of the scale, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing duo Jack Harvey and Ryan Hunter-Reay (96), plus Sato (98), failed to break the 100-lap barrier.