INDIANAPOLIS — Two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Takuma Sato shot to the highest of the pace chart late Tuesday on the primary day of preparations for “The Nice American Race.”

Sato went 228.939 miles per hour (368.44 kph) round Indianapolis Motor Speedway to bump six-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon as quickest on opening day. Dixon’s lap of 227.768 mph had topped the scoring pylon for a number of hours till Sato’s huge run in a Dale Coyne Racing entry.

Jimmie Johnson was third quickest adopted by teammate Marcus Ericsson. Chip Ganassi Racing drivers have been second, third, fourth and sixth quickest (reigning IndyCar champion Alex Palou).

It was a robust day for Honda, which has been crushed by Chevrolet in 4 of 5 races up to now this IndyCar season. Honda scored its first win of the season Saturday with Colton Herta on the highway course at Indy.

Ten Honda drivers cracked the highest 12 on Tuesday. The quickest Chevy driver was Rinus VeeKay of Ed Carpenter Racing in fourth. VeeKay was the quickest driver with out a tow at 221.552 mph.

First day surprises

There are seven rookies within the 33-driver area and several other impressed Tuesday.

David Malukas, the 20-year-old teammate to Sato at Coyne, was seventh quickest. Devlin DeFrancesco was eleventh because the Andretti Autosport driver makes an attempt to show to his rivals he is settled down since a rocky race at Texas Motor Speedway in March. DeFrancesco was a part of three incidents and penalized by IndyCar for his position in a three-car crash.

Not rookies however nonetheless robust of their first true competitors of the season have been 2013 winner Tony Kanaan in ninth, 2020 pole winner Marco Andretti in tenth and JR Hildebrand, who practically received the race as a rookie in 2011, was 14th. None has raced an IndyCar occasion but this season.

Off the monitor

Indianapolis native Conor Daly settled into his house on the speedway by bringing an inflatable sizzling tub to the driving force motorhome lot. Daly had been offering content material from the recent tub since he set it up forward of final weekend’s highway course race and was trying ahead to 2 weeks of entertaining.

When Daly returned to his motorhome Tuesday, he found the recent tub had been tampered with and deemed it “now not usable. A minimum of for a very long time.”

“I want to announce that my sizzling tub has been bamboozled,” Daly posted on Twitter.

The motorhome lot is infamous for pranks in the course of the month at IMS and Daly was on the hunt for the perpetrator. He didn’t reveal what had occurred to his sizzling tub.