ST. PETERSBURG, FLA. – The first day of official on-track action is in the books for the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series. Some news, notes and quotes after practice to follow.
- All bar Practice 1 pace setters James Hinchcliffe and Justin Wilson improved their times in Practice 2. Hinchcliffe and Wilson’s morning times left them sixth and seventh in the combined times.
- Here’s qualifying groups for Saturday. Hard to call either one harder than the other at the moment…
- Schmidt Peterson’s Simon Pagenaud, now sporting Environmental Rail Solutions aboard on his all-light blue No. 77 Honda this race, said left several tenths on the table struggling for front grip. Considering he was less than four tenths off the pace of overall leader Takuma Sato, that could be a dangerous sign for the rest of the weekend.
- In his open-wheel return, Juan Pablo Montoya ended 19th on the combined time charts in the No. 2 Verizon Team Penske Chevrolet, albeit only nine tenths off Sato. “Obviously we wanted to be a little further up the speed charts, but we knew it was going to be a learning process,” he said. “This is my first time on this circuit, so we had to guess a little bit on the setups. Unfortunately we unloaded pretty far off.” I saw him at one point head-on through Turns 1,2 and 3, and the car looked to have stepped out on him. He’s still got that level of car control.
- Best of the four Chip Ganassi Racing team drivers on the day? That would be 2009 St. Pete winner Ryan Briscoe, back in a full-time IndyCar seat for the first time since 2012. He ended, fittingly, eighth in the No. 8 NTT Data Chevrolet. “We made some good setup changes but we still have some work to do for tomorrow. I think we’re on the right track,” said the Australian. Teammates were ninth (Scott Dixon), 16th (Tony Kanaan) and 17th (Charlie Kimball) after all experimenting with different setups.
- Jack Hawksworth led the quartet of rookies in the No. 98 BHA/BBM Honda in 11th. Carlos Munoz was 13th (No. 34 Cinsay/AndrettiTV.com Honda), Mikhail Aleshin 14th (No. 7 SMP Racing Honda) and Carlos Huertas 22nd and last (No. 18 Dale Coyne Racing Honda).
- Huertas, though, was not out of his depth at only 1.8 seconds off the pace of Sato, and half a second behind countryman Sebastian Saavedra. Considering he’d never seen the track or sat in the Coyne car before Practice 1, a fine day’s work in all honesty. Additionally, he was substantially ahead of where Ana Beatriz was after Friday last year, although her car was evil handling to put it nicely.
- We expect Mike Conway to be something of a miracle worker on road and street courses, but 20th in the No. 20 Fuzzy’s Vodka Chevrolet entry probably wasn’t what team or driver expected today. “We didn’t find as much as we wanted between sessions 1 and 2. We are struggling a bit to get the Fuzzy’s Chevy where we would like it in terms of time. We tried a lot of things today and we’ll study our data and see where we can improve for Saturday,” he said.
- Paul Page made his return to IndyCar for the first time since 2004, his last year in TV for the open-wheel series. The legendary Page is the new voice of IMS Radio, and handled things well throughout the first two sessions back on the mic.
- Mazda Road to Indy day 1 practice leaders: Gabby Chaves (Indy Lights Presented by Cooper Tires), Spencer Pigot (Pro Mazda Presented by Cooper Tires), Jake Eidson (Cooper Tires USF2000 Powered by Mazda).
- Pirelli World Challenge Friday practice leaders: Tomas Enge (GT), Nick Mancuso (GT-A), Jack Baldwin (GTS).
More to come after Practice 3 and qualifying on Saturday.
