Marco Andretti appeared to put the lie to Honda struggling for pace at Phoenix with 187.678mph lap that narrowly eclipsed champion Scott Dixon. Andretti turned 67 laps but it was his 19th that delivered the punch to take the #27 Andretti Autosport entry to the top of the times, lapping the 1.022-mile course in 19.6038sec. Dixon’s Ganassi-Chevrolet was a scant 0.0028sec slower. Backing up Honda’s apparent pace increase was James Hinchcliffe, whose Schmidt Peterson Motorsport car in fourth split the Ed Carpenter Racing-Chevrolets of Ed Carpenter and Josef Newgarden. One team that took a different tack was this afternoon’s pacesetters, Team Penske. Simon Pagenaud and Helio Castroneves...
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