Thermal – EL1: Alex Palou at the top from the start

The Spanish driver from Chip Ganassi Racing moved to the top of the hierarchy from the fourth of his 24 laps of the Thermal Club, and in the end he was ahead of Christian Lundgaard (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) and Marcus Armstrong (Ganassi). The particular format of this weekend of the “$1 Million Challenge” gives a lot of track time to the teams, with two hours for this first session, and three hours later in the evening.

But with only seven sets of tires at their disposal for Friday and Saturday, the drivers also had to deal with significant tire degradation. Most drivers agree that Sunday's race, contested over two ten-lap segments, with no possibility of changing tires between the two halves, will give pride of place to the management of Firestone tires.

“It's difficult to learn a lot, the tires clearly wear a lot, everyone loses between five and seven tenths on each run. It's difficult because we only have seven sets of tires for testing.", for example indicated Christian Lundgaard after these first two hours of testing.

No red flags came to interrupt the two hours of driving, but numerous track exits were reported, with the drivers struggling on a track not currently offering much grip. The most impressive incident happened at the very end of the session for Marcus Ericsson (Andretti), who had to return to the pits with his left front brake on fire.

Ganassi and McLaren monopolized a large part of the top 10, with seven cars in the first ten places. Linus Lundqvist (Ganassi) was the fastest of the Rookies, with a final sixth place ahead of his compatriot Felix Rosenqvist (Meyer Shank), who continues the good momentum of the St. Petersburg event two weeks ago .

Romain Grosjean (Juncos Hollinger) finished the session in eleventh place, confirming the good spirits seen during his first weekend with his new team. The drivers will return to the track at 22 p.m. French time for a second session, which will continue until 1 a.m.

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