Indianapolis 500 practice 1 notebook: Defending champ Alex Palou tops speed chart

The roar of engines once again consumed the Hoosier sky on Tuesday as 33 drivers took to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the first practice session ahead of the 110th Indianapolis 500 on May 24. 

Alex Palou, the race's defending winner, IndyCar's three-time defending champion and the series points leader, had the fastest lap of the session, with his best lap clocking in at 39.83 seconds and 225.937 miles per hour around the 2.5-mile track.

The session was the first of four before Indianapolis 500 qualifying begins on May 16. 

"It was honestly almost ideal conditions for qualification here," said Kyle Kirkwood, who was seventh in the session and is second in the series standings. "A little breezy. I don't know what it's going to be like on Saturday. I'm not sure if you can actually look into that too in depth at this point given that it's only Tuesday."

Temperatures on Wednesday and Thursday are slated to be much cooler than Tuesday's and Saturday's, which could have a big impact on how teams go about practice for the rest of the week. 

Marcus Armstrong, Conor Daly, two-time 500 winner Josef Newgarden and 2008 winner Scott Dixon rounded out the top five, with Graham Rahal, Kirkwood, Scott McLaughlin, Romain Grosjean and David Malukas completing the top 10. 

Other notable drivers include Pato O'Ward in 12th, two-time winner Takuma Sato in 14th, four-time winner Helio Castroneves in 15th, 2022 winner Marcus Ericsson in 23rd and rookie Mick Schumacher in 32nd. Katherine Legge was the slowest of the 33 drivers in the session. 

What drivers said

Daly, a native of Noblesville, Ind., is not a full-time NTT IndyCar Series driver in 2026 but brought plenty of speed to IMS on Tuesday.

"Our car is fast," Daly said. "It just feels really good. So just kind of driving around and working through a few small things and, yeah, just tuning to kind of what I want and evaluating a few other things.

"But, yeah, just a good day one. Obviously the test was good too, but this whole process is you can get swept up in it. You can get behind, and you can get a little messy."

The Indianapolis 500 will be the seventh race of the 2026 IndyCar campaign, with Christian Lundgaard, who is fourth in the series standings, having won the May 9 race on the IMS road course.

At the top of the points list is Palou, who leads Kirkwood by 27 points going into the most prestigious race of the season. Indy's prestige is such that Kirkwood, who is currently embroiled in the thick of the title fight, wouldn't be thinking about it in the closing laps of the race. 

"Think in the case scenario that you have a shot to win this race, the last thing I'm going to be looking at is what points I have at the end of this race, right?" Kirkwood said.

"Winning this race ... I think most drivers will say winning this race is quite a bit bigger than winning the championship. In many ways, yeah, I'm going to throw caution to the wind if it comes down to being able to win.

"Of course, if I'm running between that kind of 10th to fifth range like I've been doing the past few years, then yeah, you're looking at points more so because you don't really have a shot in that final stint if you're in that range unless something crazy happens. But if I'm at the front, yeah, points aren't going to be my focus."

Quotes provided by IndyCar Media.