Showers Bring Cloudy Conclusion to Daytona Sessions
Written by Allan Brewer · February 2, 2007
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Photo: ShaunPayneIRL
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Castroneves Rises to Peak on Thursday Charts
Tony Kanaan’s 135.549 MPH Lap Fastest at Daytona Two-Day Test
by Allan Brewer
allan@fastmachines.com
Helio Castroneves of Team Penske achieved a speed of 135.335 mph in 1:12.3538 seconds at Daytona International Speedway on Thursday afternoon, shortly before rain clouds opened and forced the Indy Racing League’s organizers and teams to call it a day.
Helio was followed by Andretti Green Racing’s Tony Kanaan at 134.145 mph and Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon (134.120 mph) as the trio brought to a close the widely anticipated return of the IndyCar Series to “The World Center of Racing”.
“Today with the wind, the situation was different than Wednesday. All the same, it was a productive test for Team Penske,” Helio commented later.
After raising safety issues with the circuit on Wednesday, Castroneves went on to say that attempts to embellish the track overnight by DIS officials offered “somewhat of an improvement”.
Dan Wheldon, Marco Andretti, and Sam Hornish, Jr. rounded out the top six drivers on the timesheet at the conclusion of the two-day practice in Florida.
“Everything went well for us these two days,” said Hornish. “The track is definitely challenging. It’s a difficult place to find the right balance and setup on the car.”
Day-long twenty-five mile per hour wind gusts moved northward across the Daytona complex from a southeasterly direction, effectively holding speeds down on Thursday.
The cars encountered the stiff headwind as they crossed the Daytona start/finish line approaching top speed between 190 and 200 miles per hour.
Wednesday’s best lap of 135.549 mph (1:12.2393 seconds) turned in by AGR’s Kanaan remained the quickest when the two day IRL-sanctioned testing concluded.
Castroneves showed sufficient speed to challenge Kanaan’s best when the rain began to fall Thursday mid-afternoon, thus foiling his attempt to wrest the title “Fastest at Daytona” away from his fellow Brazilian.
A total of 1697 laps were completed over both days with six of the seven fastest laps put in over the entire affair made on the first day of testing.
Team Penske paced the field for much of the second morning as the red and white cars took their familiar place at the top of the scoring pylon.
Castroneves’ 1:12.6128 second lap at 134.852 topped teammate Hornish’s time by a scant fifteen hundredths of a second in Thursday’s opening stanza. The Penske pair was followed by Wheldon third-fastest and Kanaan fourth.
Kanaan’s AGR teammate, Danica Patrick, suffered through two frustrating days of practice, hampered by a car seat that didn’t fit her on Wednesday, then hamstrung by the rainstorm on the second day.
Her 1:14.3817 second lap in the truncated Thursday afternoon practice was her two-day best, averaging a speed of 131.645 mph on her eighteenth and final lap of the test session.
The IndyCars return to the Sunshine State in two weeks at Homestead-Miami Raceway for another two-day test on February 21st thru 22nd. The Homestead test features a first-ever test of the open-wheel racers under the lights in anticipation of the IRL’s 2007 season-opening Indy 300 competition in the tropical south Florida climes on March 24th. The race will be presented live by ESPN at 8PM (EST). Event-related and ticket information is available online at IndyCar.com.
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