Just got back - that was pretty cool.
Got there around 9am, found my friend, he had a free ticket, I had to pay $20 (I'll probably be at the race in my normal sponsor RV spot). We walked in and found some seats in the main grandstand and watched whoever was on track at 9am(*), and wondered who was on track at 9am, then wandered under the tunnel to the paddock. You pretty much had full paddock/pit access (not sure if the pit was appreciated, but we went behind the pit boxes. My general rule - don't make an ass of yourself and usually people are cool with you wherever. Looked at all the garages and cars, saw a couple of drivers. Then we went into the paddock building up to the second level and found some seats and they started IndyCar practice. We were down at the very end of pit road at that point. Sat there a bit and then went towards the bridge, friend got a lot of good pictures from the bridge, went down the other side and sat in the Turn 1 grandstands for a good bit and finished the morning practice there. At that point they cleared all the cars out so we wandered back to the paddock and bummed around, then the friend had to leave so I grabbed some food, found a seat towards the middle of pit road in the paddock building and watched whoever was on track around 12:30pm(*). They finished and at 2pm all the IndyCar teams hustled back and watched most of that practice before I had to leave to deal with a work issue.
(*) The mystery was Indy Lights. They had maybe 8 cars there. Sounded different, ran Cooper tires.
And whoever Marcus Ericsson is currently dating is a cute blonde. She sat in the paddock above his pit.
Here's pit road: