|
|
|
|
|
21 cars are entered
to compete in the first IndyCar Series race ever on a purpose
built road course this weekend at the Speedway Motorsports owned
Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, California. Dennis Sylvia will be
covering the event for O/IRR this weekend, and is at the track
this morning shooting pictures.
The only other time
the IndyCars raced on anything but an oval was on the streets of
St. Petersburg, FL in April, and while almost everything went
well, there were issues with two of the more oval-centric drivers,
AJ Foyt IV and Ed Carpenter. While not mentioning names, both made
frequent contact, and while one was awful at it, the other was
worse. Since then Tony George's Vision Racing hired Roberto Moreno
to sort out the Carpenter car at the Infineon Open Test and act as
a driving couch for Ed. In addition, Ed also ran the MIPS road
race connected with the USGP at Indy. Vision Racing, Larry Curry
and Carpenter have learned a lot about what it takes to road race,
and we should see some improvements from this weekend. While they
will still probably remain at the back of the pack, perhaps they
will manage to do it safely.
As for Foyt IV,
whose car was a DNF at PPIR for driver/handling issues, he'll be
sitting out the road race, replaced by road racer Jeff Bucknum.
According to the not always accurate entry list, AJ Foyt Racing
has entered a Dallara Chevy, the last time the team used their
Panoz chassis to road race at St. Pete. The cars are on the track
now and I just talked to Dennis and he is now online, look for
pictures soon. Follow today's running recap of the two practice
sessions here...
|
|
***
|
|
There are two practice sessions
today, the first a two-hour run beginning at 12:30 EDT, and a
one hour session later, beginning at 5:00 EDT.
|
|
|
Please note that for some
reason most of the content, results and pictures from the
morning session were lost in cyberspace, and I "saved"
them regularly. I will repost them and a few others and then
link the combined results from both sessions.
|
|
|
The following
early pictures from Dennis Sylvia show the elevation changes at
Infineon Raceway.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
All O/IRR pictures
from Infineon Raceway by Dennis Sylvia
|
|
The bottom picture posted from this morning
was one of the first shot, taken from before the fog burned off. The
remaining pictures shown below are from later in the day, including the
one under this caption which is the last of the elevation shots.
|
|
|
|
They are also running "Historic Grand
Prix" cars at Infineon this weekend, here are two examples of the
cars, the black car is the former Mario Andretti car, and the other one
may be a former Emerson Fittipaldi car.
|
|
|
|
|
|
In the first MIPS practice session, Scott
Mayer claimed that his throttle stuck and he ran into the car of Jeff
Simmons, shown below after they brought it back to the pit area.
|
|
|
|
Simmons was able to run in the 2nd session
and finished second to Marco Andretti on the chart. Mayer sat it out,
somewhat as shown below.
|
|
|
|
***
|
|
Both Friday practice sessions are over,
see the final combined results here...
Ryan Briscoe has posted the best speed
of the day at 108.130, 5 mph faster the Helio Castroneves open test
leading speed. On these road courses it isn't uncommon to see speeds
increase with every session as the rubber builds up in the groove.
Briscoe's TCGR teammates, Scott Dixon and Giorgio Pantano ran the 4th and
5th best speeds of the day, and like with the morning session results, 6
Toyota cars are in the top ten, as I have said, on streets, road courses
and short ovals, a lack of power can be an asset. The Team Penske cars of
Castroneves and Hornish Jr. ran 2nd and 9th respectively. The AGR cars of
Kanaan, Franchitti, Herta and Wheldon posted the 3rd, 6th,7th and 8th best
speed and Alex Barron in the Team Cheever Dallara Toyota rounded out the
top ten. The best Chevy was Enge's, 13th on the chart, with Scheckter16th
and Bucknum18th in the Foyt car. Danica Patrick finished 19th on the speed
chart. Here is the schedule for the remainder of the weekend;
Practice 3
Sat. Aug. 27 :: 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
Qualifications Sat. Aug. 27 :: 3:30 - 4:45 p.m.
Final Practice Sat. Aug. 27 :: 7 - 7:30 p.m.
Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix
Sun. Aug. 28 :: 3:45 p.m.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
*** |
|
|
|
|
|
