Following his second place finish two weeks ago at St. Petersburg, Helio Castroneves would top the charts with a lap of one minute and eight seconds, 120.781 mph.
“I think it’s better to be lucky than good,” he said. “Obviously with the yellow in the end a lot of guys probably put tires, but the car felt pretty good. The AAA team felt really strong, the morning unfortunately it was a little bit difficult because seeing that the track has lots of grip and when you have an extra set of tires certainly it helps a little bit. In the end of the day, with A.J. (Allmendinger) and Will (Power) we’ve been actually doing a lot of different stuff out there and it seems to be working.”
Alex Tagliani would time in second fastest, seven-hundereths off of Castroneves. Tagliani finished 10th at St. Pete.
“I am really proud of what the team accomplished here this weekend,” he said. “Obviously we are accustomed to being in the Firestone Fast 6 last year. I really didn’t like using the Port-a-Potty in the back of the grid. We struggled on the new tires. These tires are different. These are road course tires. We also had a chance to test here and the team came prepared.”
Rookie Tristan Vautier continued to impress after running up front most of the race last week as he timed in third fastest. Vautier, though, ran into mechanical problems at St. Pete which relegated him to a 21st place finish.
“It was good,” he said. “It was disappointing at the end of the first practice to cause a red because of a mistake, but no, I’m very happy with the car that the team has given me today. I think that I still have some room to keep improving, and we need to carry the momentum from today into tomorrow.”
Simon Pagenaud was fourth while Will Power rounded out the top five. Power led testing last month.
“We definitely have a bit of work to do with the Verizon car because we’re just off the pace a bit,” he said. “We were running top five all day, but we really had to push to get there. We’ll get together tonight and work to figure out how to improve for qualifying tomorrow.”
After struggling in St. Pete, Scott Dixon was sixth in practice, followed by EJ Viso, A.J. Allmendinger, James Jakes and Takumo Sato.
James Hinchcliffe, who picked up his first career victory at St. Petersburg, was 15th on the chart.
“Today did not go as planned, but you get these days in racing,” he said. “We had a couple of things go wrong in the first session, and the way the yellow fell in the second (session) we didn’t really get a proper run all day. I think we can get the Go Daddy car up there tomorrow when it counts. I think it’ll be a challenge, but that’s what they pay us the big bucks for.”
The IndyCar Series cars will take to the track tomorrow for qualifying, with the race scheduled for Sunday afternoon at 3pm EST.
