Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio Practice 2 results || Combined results

LEXINGTON, Ohio – Scott Dixon, who has won five of the past eight Verizon IndyCar Series races at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, recorded the quickest lap through two practice sessions for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio.

Dixon’s lap of 1 minute, 05.9645 seconds on the 2.258-mile, 13-turn road course in the 75-minute afternoon session was six-tenths of a second off the track qualifying record set by Dario Franchitti in 1999 and matched by Gil de Ferran in 2000.

“We went through a few different set-up changes just to try to find our groove, but overall the car was pretty quick,” said Dixon, who is driving the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing Chevrolet. “We’ll hopefully carry some speed into (qualifying) and try to start up front.”

Sebastien Bourdais, the pole sitter for the August 2014 race at Mid-Ohio, was quickest in the late-morning practice (1:06.2034) and second in the afternoon (1:06.0190) in the No. 11 Team Hydroxycut-KVSH Racing Chevrolet.

Five different teams were represented in the top five of the lap time chart, and the top 20 cars were separated by less than a second in the 75-minute afternoon practice.

"It is the same old Mid-Ohio, just massive improvement in lap times throughout the sessions," Bourdais said. "It is always very tricky at the beginning of the session, but the Hydroxycut machine seems to be strong whether it’s early, late, new tires, old tires. We just have to find a little bit of front grip. One thing that has developed for us this year is we never seem to have issues making the car work on the black (primary tires), but we have a problem on the red (alternate) tires. If the Firestone reds behave for us, I think we will have a shot at the pole.”

Three rounds of knockout qualifying will be held at 3 p.m. ET Aug. 1 live on NBCSN. The green flag for the 90-lap race flies at 2:05 p.m. ET Aug. 2 on CNBC. NBCSN will telecast a re-air at 6 p.m. ET.

Dixon is third in the Verizon IndyCar Series championship standings entering Round 13 of 16. Front-runner Juan Pablo Montoya of Team Penske has a 42-point advantage over Graham Rahal of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing and Dixon is 48 points out of first.

Reigning series champion Will Power, who is fifth in the standings, was third quick in the second practice (1:06.0781) in the No. 1 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet and Rahal (1:06.1049) was fourth in the No. 15 Steak ‘n Shake Honda. Takuma Sato, who this weekend will mark his 100th Indy car start, was fifth (1:06.1361) in the No. 14 ABC Supply Honda for AJ Foyt Racing.

Montoya, who was limited to 12 laps in the morning practice because of an alternator issue, had a best lap of 1:06.9930 on 21 laps in the afternoon for 21st on the lap time chart.