IndyCar Long Beach Friday: “You certainly notice the energy”
- Archie O’Reilly
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Written by Archie O’Reilly, Edited by Morgan Holiday
Team Penske’s Will Power ended opening day of the 50th edition of the Grand Prix of Long Beach as the quickest driver in the first practice session.
Topping the second of the two 10-minute split group sessions to round off Practice One, the two-time series champion led Andretti’s Marcus Ericsson, who topped the first of those group sessions on the combined time sheets.
Kyle Kirkwood was third overall to cap off a strong session for Andretti. The only red flag of Friday - which saw Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing rookie Louis Foster stranded in the runoff late in the final segment - limited Colton Herta to a still-solid eighth.
Meyer Shank Racing pair Marcus Armstrong and Felix Rosenqvist rounded out the overall top five, which was split by only 0.0648 seconds.
Josef Newgarden was sixth - and third in the second group - for a resurgent Penske, ahead of back-to-back Chip Ganassi Racing race winner in 2025, Álex Palou, who topped the initial 45-minute all-car running. Scott Dixon, reigning Long Beach winner and teammate to Palou, was 10th.
A number of drivers turned to the softer and quicker alternate tyres in the all-skate session. Arrow McLaren pair Christian Lundgaard and Nolan Siegel set their quickest times of practice in the first part of the day, placing them ninth and 11th overall. Scott McLaughlin, one position back, used the same strategy.
The only significant strife of the session came for Pato O’Ward, for whom wall contact on the exit of the hairpin necessitated a left-rear corner change and limited him to only five laps in the all-car session. He managed to get back on track late in the first group session, placing P5 in that segment on his first fast lap after the early incident.
A number of drivers found the runoff as the limits were tested but only Foster, one position behind O’Ward in the first group session, found himself stuck as he quipped on the radio: “I’m Austin Power’d!”
Penske rebound from Thermal “anomaly”
Newgarden did not beat around the bush when reflecting on Penske’s Thermal weekend, which saw all three drivers knocked out in the first round of qualifying.
“I think anomaly is a good way to put it,” he said. “There’s no doubt, Thermal was a disaster. We had a tough weekend. The good thing is we’re just getting going, though. We’re two races in. We had an excellent St. Pete - our cars were in a good window, team did a great job. Then Thermal was the complete opposite.
“We were just sort of nowhere. I think we found our way towards the end - we diverged between the race cars and I think we found a direction. We can’t erase what happened. We can’t go back. It was a tough weekend - just did not go very well. But I don’t think it’s an indicator of the rest of the year.”
Newgarden is confident that Penske’s street course package, which secured him a third-place finish, sets the team back in good stead for the Long Beach weekend.
“We’re trying to create good race cars across the board, which you have to have in this series,” he said. “You have a base position on a street course style, road course style and then ovals alike. I think our street course car has been in a really good window - felt really solid today and happy about where we’re at coming into the weekend.
“I think we can really put something good together if we stay on it.”
Long Beach buzz keeps on growing
After the opening day of track action for IndyCar’s season opener in St. Petersburg, there were remarks that it felt like race day on Friday. And the story is the same at Long Beach.
“It just felt bigger than last year,” Newgarden said. “It looked like race day today. It was super cool. I think that’s the great thing about motorsports right now. There’s an excitement. There’s a cool factor to it. If you want to talk about trends, I think motorsports is a trend right now - especially with young people - and it’s really fun to see that.
“You’re just seeing this resurgence. It has been unique to see over the last two years the amount of kids that I see at the race track that are bringing their parents - it’s not the other way around. I meet parents that are my age and they’re going: ‘I know nothing about this but my six-year-old loves it and loves you and loves IndyCar.’
“It used to be the other way around. It was: ‘Hey, I used to love IndyCar back in the ’80s and now I’m here and I’m trying to bring my kids. But it’s the other way - the kids are bringing the parents. It’s very, very cool to be a part of. It’s a fun time to be a part of motorsports.”
Newgarden further hailed the event that Long Beach puts on year after year as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
“I love being an IndyCar driver,” he said. “And one of the great things about being an IndyCar driver is you get to race at Long Beach. It’s certainly good for our community and it’s great for this community. You see great excitement when you’re here. You certainly notice the energy difference at this race than you get at other places.
“It’s quite a joy to be a part of it. The entire team has kept it alive and made it flourish for so many years. They’ve done such a great job. Hopefully we have another 50 years up the road.”
“Angry” Ericsson starts off strong
Ericsson’s 2024 season - his first with Andretti - was disappointing as he rounded off the season 15th in the championship. But he started 2025 strong, finishing sixth in St. Pete and finishing no lower than seventh in any session through Thermal qualifying.
But a scruffy race in the Californian desert saw the Swede leave Thermal with a 21st-place finish.
“Last year was a big disappointment,” he said. “I worked really, really hard this off-season to be better in all aspects. I feel like I came out really strong this season. St. Pete I was fast all weekend. Thermal was really fast all weekend.
“Then I had a bad race, fell on my own mistake and haven’t been so angry with myself in a long time because I feel like we made so much progress as a group. Been digging deep since then and working really hard to come back here and have a strong weekend.
“It’s a big year for us. We’re moving in the right direction and I feel like the start of the season has been strong for us.”
Given Andretti’s renowned street course package and history of success at Long Beach, expectations are high for the team.
“We expect to be up there fighting for the win,” Ericsson said. “To start it like this [second in practice] is the best way to do that. We have a really good setup in general to work with and the team does a really good job preparing the cars and giving us drivers cars that we feel confidence in.
“Street course racing is so much about that confidence. It’s being close to those walls and having the confidence to push to the limit. Andretti does a really good job with that so that makes it a pleasure to drive.”
Drivers relishing the tyre challenges
Fallout from St. Pete was partially centred around the highly-degrading alternate compound tyres and the addition of an extra set of the softer tyre at the expense of one set of the harder primaries for 2025.
“Firestone is doing a very good job this year giving us very different compounds that’s not easy to drive,” Ericsson said. “But I think that’s great for the dynamic in the races. I don’t think races with compounds that just stay consistent throughout stints is fun racing. I think it should be difficult so you can differentiate from your competition. I love the challenge.”
Newgarden feels the challenge of the tyres only adds to the “variedness” that makes IndyCar racing attractive.
“It goes up and down,” he said. “Sometimes we have a very consistent tyre. Sometimes we have an alternate like we have this weekend where they’re quite fast for a lap but they degrade heavily. It never bugs me. It comes back to my analogy that racing in IndyCar is like solving a puzzle - and that puzzle is never the same.
“Year over year even, same track, the puzzle changes. I don’t mind it. I think there’s certainly a uniqueness to this current puzzle with the tyres and it’s added some excitement. Certainly when you look at Thermal, there was a lot of ways you could approach it. It keeps you on your toes. It’s certainly exciting for us. It makes us do our jobs really well. I love it.”
Newgarden has suggested Long Beach could deliver as many as four stops for teams in Sunday’s race. He expects the complexion to be similar to that in St. Pete.
“You’ll see the same sort of commitment or execution at this race,” he said. “The primary is very robust and certainly feels like a really solid tyre. Then I think the alternate has some good speed that you can extract but it’s got a very tight window and doesn’t have a lot of durability.
“Anyone that can figure out how to add durability to that is going to be doing something magical. I don’t know that anyone is going to find a combination that makes it work.”
Changes for 2025: more laps and hybrid
The complexion at Long Beach is altered somewhat in 2025 by two major changes: five added laps to make a 95-lap race and the first hybrid-powered Grand Prix of Long Beach.
“Obviously the weight is a bit different so change of direction is a little bit worse than last year,” Ericsson said. “But that extra power you get in the exits, it’s quite significant. It makes it a little bit more tricky to drive the car on the limit and how you want to use the hybrid to your advantage.”
Newgarden feels that not a lot has changed.
“It still feels like Long Beach,” he said. “A lot of the driving technique that you’re doing is quite similar. You’re just adding in the hybrid utilisation. You’re using it a lot - you’re regenning under braking. But this hybrid system is extremely friendly within regen so it’s comfortable under braking. There’s nothing evil about it. It’s pretty easy to drive.
“You’re just trying to make sure that you’re optimising how much charge you’re allowed to use per lap. But as far as driving here, it feels like Long Beach of the last 10 years in a good way. Flows a lot the same that it did last year.”
Contrary to Newgarden’s suggestion of a four-stop race, Ericsson theorised that a three-stopper “with pretty big windows” is likely amid additional laps in a bid to avoid a fuel-saving race. Newgarden admitted that a “three-stop would be good” if possible.
“Hopefully it will make racing better because always if you have two or three or however many stops but the windows are quite big, it creates opportunities to do things differently to your competition,” Ericsson said. “I’m hopeful that will be the case.”
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