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Spring Training - Day 1 Testing

Written by Scott Keller · March 9, 2007

Updated 3/10: Paul Tracy shows that the new Panoz DP01 is very fast, Baumgartner crashes, and Panoz spare parts are nowhere to be found.


While yesterday was a disappointing “media day” at Laguna Seca for Champ Car fans, there is something to get excited about. The new DP01 Champ Car is proving to be very, very fast. The first session started out with some very unimpressive speeds, but soon the lap times were dropping drastically. By the afternoon session, several drivers turned times better than the Champ Car record at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, and came very close to setting a new overall track record.

It’s no surprise, however, that the Champ Car website makes no mention of the Champ Car track record being broken, and overall track record being in peril. I’m beginning to think that Champ Car just doesn’t understand what excites a race fan. Come on ladies and gents! Toot your horn a little bit over there at the front offices! You really need to spin something positive out of a very negative week thus far in Laguna!

I can’t understand why they haven’t crowed about how fast the new car is, and capitalized on the fact that this new car is likely to crack a new track record tomorrow. Unbelievable. Maybe that’s what happens when you fire your best reporter?

And speaking of Robin Miller, he wrote a doozy today. Read it here. Apparently he was as unimpressed as many of the fans were. The kid gloves have definitely come off.

I’d post some results of today’s sessions for you, but woops, no results are on the Champ Car website for today’s sessions. Nice work, guys. Come on, how hard is it to list 16 drivers and their best times?

Champ Car’s status a serious, professional racing series is in serious doubt, I’d say. It is too bad. The new car combined with a host of talented drivers (several that won’t have a good seat this year) and a series that stands behind them would really be something worth watching. But the series management really can’t get their act together this year. And what kind of idea is it to force all teams to buy new cars in the same year they yank team subsidies? I think allowing those two events to coincide is probably a mistake. Time will tell, especially in the middle of the season after a couple of DP01’s are smacked up pretty good during the first three races of the season, which are all temporary street circuits. Zoom-zoom, and boom-boom.

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Update: I checked back in on the site at 2:40 AM ET / 11:40 PM PT, and the Champ Car website has been updated with some results. You can view them here.

Oh, and pictures here.

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2nd Update: David Malsher at Autosport.com has the best report so far on Day 1 for the Champ Cars at Laguna. He writes:

  • Sebastian Bourdais has gearbox issues all day, but the spare parts they need are not available! Good heavens.
  • Zsolt Baumgartner, the “test” driver for Minardi Team USA, apparantly cracked up a DP01 pretty good in turn six. No mention of this anywhere else in the world. I wonder how much money he brought to the table for Minardi? About enough to fix their DP01?
  • PCM is struggling with steering, braking, and gearbox issues. Ouch.
  • The car is fast, fast, fast.

    • Read the entire story here.

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    Comments

    One Response to “Spring Training - Day 1 Testing”

    1. George on March 11th, 2007 9:04 am

      Great news: SeaBass shattered the unofficial track lap record by almost a half second in the new Champ Car DP01. He set a lap time of 1:05.880, the old unofficial time was 1:06.309.

      The not so great news: That unofficial track record was set by a Toyota 2006 F1 car. No doubt if a Renault or Ferrari had run the course it would have been 1-1.5 seconds a lap quicker. Just my opinion.

      But great news for the new car none the less!

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