Franchitti Fastest in Final Practice

Dario Franchitti ran the fastest lap of the weekend when he posted a 1:18.0988 second lap in final practice. The Scotsman is looking for his first victory of the 2013 IndyCar season and first since winning the 2012 Indianapolis 500. Franchitti has one career victory at Sonoma. He led flag-to-flag in 2009. Defending IndyCar champion Ryan Hunter-Reay was second 0.2554 seconds back and ahead of Sébastien Bourdais in third. Scott Dixon was fourth, 0.4655 seconds off his teammate. Justin Wilson rounded out the top five in what has been a consistent weekend for the Englishman so far.

Helio Castroneves was sixth in the session with Marco Andretti just 0.0958 seconds back of him. Most recent IndyCar winner Charlie Kimball was 0.0053 off of Andretti with his former teammate Graham Rahal in ninth with Simona de Silvestro rounding out the top ten. Only 0.0511 seconds covered Andretti to de Silvestro. James Hinchcliffe was eleventh with James Jakes and rookie Tristan Vautier twelfth and thirteenth. Australians and the winners of the last three Sonoma IndyCar races Ryan Briscoe and Will Power were fourteenth and fifteenth.

Sebastián Saavedra was sixteenth ahead of the Hondas of Simon Pagenaud and Takuma Sato. EJ Viso was nineteenth with JR Hildebrand in twentieth. Tony Kanaan was twenty-first ahead of the Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing duo of Josef Newgarden and Lucas Luhr. James Davison was twenty-fourth with Ed Carpenter rounding out the field in twenty-fifth.

The top eighteen were covered by less than a second with 2.8631 covering the whole field. Should these practice times carry over to the first round of qualifying, the twelve drivers that would advance to round two would look like this:

Group One: Wilson, Castroneves, Rahal, de Silvestro, Hinchcliffe and Jakes. Not advancing: Power, Pagenaud, Sato, Viso, Newgarden, Davison.
Group Two: Franchitti, Hunter-Reay, Bourdais, Dixon, Andretti and Kimball. Not advancing: Vautier, Briscoe, Saavedra, Hildebrand, Kanaan, Luhr and Carpenter.

IndyCar qualifying will take place at 5:30 p.m. ET with it airing on NBCSN at 9:00 p.m. ET.