Josef Newgarden didn’t expect to learn all the nuances of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway stacked upon the variables of the new Dallara chassis and Honda power for the No. 67 Dollar General car for Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing in a few days.

“You have to have a healthy respect for the Speedway,” the 2011 Firestone Indy Lights champion said before breezing through the Rookie Orientation Program last week on the 2.5-mile oval.

The 21-year-old Tennessee native’s respect for the 103-year-old racetrack grew with 16 minutes left in the six-hour practice session May 16 when his car bobbled in Turn 4, did a quarter-spin and struck a glancing blow on the pit lane retaining wall. It was the first incident of contact of the month.

Click it: Practice 5 results || Combined practice results

Other than a scare, it was a positive day for Newgarden, who topped the time chart for the third time.

“You don’t get many lucky breaks around this place and I think I just got one,” Newgarden said. “The guys have done a great job putting together such a good car and I don’t want to hurt the thing. I’ll try to learn what happened and why the thing got around on me.

“Everyone’s trying to figure out the race car around this place and obviously I have a little more work to do. We were old on our tire run and trying to run as far as possible to see how the car reacts and I think it’s just difficult to run in the tow and today I got bit by it a little.”

Newgarden’s best lap of 40.3977 seconds (222.785 mph) led Andretti Autosport teammates Marco Andretti (222.108 mph), Ryan Hunter-Reay (221.763) and James Hinchcliffe (221.638) as teams continued working on race set-ups with the new Dallara chassis.

There’s one more day of practice before teams receive the added turbocharger boost for “Fast Friday” – reflecting a 40-50 horsepower gain and 4-5 mph per lap. The boost in the boost will be available for that session and the weekend time trials.

“We tried to eliminate tow laps so you get a little of a bit better sense of not just ourselves but what everybody’s doing,” said Hinchcliffe, who’s third in the series’ championship standings. “Ultimately, between our cars and the timing data that we can get there’s so much data to pore over. On top of that we’re dealing with the new cars, so we’re learning it off a lot more than we have the last couple years.”

Thirty drivers recorded 1,632 laps. Two-time Indy 500 champion Dario Franchitti (221.623) was fifth overall in the No. 50 Target Chip Ganassi Racing car and Justin Wilson was sixth (221.420) in the No. 18 Sonny’s BBQ car for Dale Coyne Racing.