Thursday, July 24, 2008

Edmonton Indy, Thursday Practice report

So day 1 in Edmonton is complete with things being dominated by two teams, Team Penske and, to the surprise of some, KV racing. The two teams shared the top four in both sessions today, the first one being dominated by Penske, with Castroneves ahead of Briscoe followed by Will Power and Oriol Servia, and the second session seeing that reversed with Power and Servia 1-2 followed by Castroneves and Briscoe. It was an eventful day with pretty much every driver having moments at some time due to the bumpy nature of the airport circuit. The plentiful amount of run off area meant that most drivers avoided hitting things with the exception of EJ Viso, who crashed in the first session and did not take part in the second one. Townsend Bell had the most excitment having an armful of spins and off track excursions, he was 25th in both sessions. Paul Tracy caused the most excitement by running well in both sessions of his first IRL race since the controversial 2002 Indy 500 when he finished second officially but many think that he had passed winner Helio Castroneves just before the yellow flags came out, but we digress. The other Canadian, Marty Roth was in his usual position at the tail end of the field, in the morning session he was 4.4 seconds slower than the next slowest driver, Jaime Camara, and in the second session he was "only" 2.3 seconds behind next slowest Townsend Bell. If the old 107% rule from Formula One was in force, these times would not be fast enough for Mad Dog Marty to qualify. Will Power's fastest time of the first day of practice is three seconds slower than his fastest time in last years first day of practice and highlights the need to boost the power of these cars on road courses. Qualifying should be itneresting tomorrow with so many cars being so close in time it could be anyone but Marty Roth's day. WIth the exception of the aforemention Roth, everyone was within 2.6 seconds in the second practice session. This could be an incident filled race, but with plenty of runoff there should not be too much need for the Safety Car, unfortunately the IRL will probably not figure that one out.

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