Saturday, March 29, 2014

Briscoe Tops Third Practice

Ryan Briscoe an the fastest lap of the weekend in third practice.
Chevrolet was fastest for their first session of the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series Season with perhaps a surprising driver leading the way.

Ryan Briscoe ran the fastest lap of the weekend, a 62.4235 second lap. Briscoe was 0.0494 seconds ahead of his former Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves. Through three practice session, three different drivers have been on top. Takuma Sato was fastest in second practice and was the lone Honda in the top five, 0.1007 seconds back in third. Sébastien Bourdais was fourth quick with Will Power rounding out the top five.

Simon Pagenaud was sixth quickest followed by fellow Honda driver James Hinchcliffe. Ganassi teammates Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon were eighth and ninth respectively. The fastest rookie was Jack Hawksworth in tenth, 0.3715 seconds back of Briscoe.

Ryan Hunter-Reay was eleventh with Mikhail Aleshin in twelfth. Justin Wilson was a half second off of Briscoe in thirteenth. Graham Rahal was fourteenth after being second in the second practice on Friday. Juan Pablo Montoya rounded out the top fifteen.

Carlos Muñoz followed his fellow Colombian on the time sheet in sixteenth. Josef Newgarden was seventeenth ahead of winners from the 2013 season Charlie Kimball and Mike Conway. Marco Andretti has had a rough two days of practice and was twentieth in the third session.

For the third consecutive practice session, the Colombianss Sebastián Saavedra and Carlos Huertas were the bottom two drivers. However, they weren't far off of the top time set by Briscoe. Saavedra was 0.9502 seconds off while 1.3121 seconds covers the whole field, from Briscoe to Huertas.

IndyCar qualifying will take place at 2:00 p.m. ET today.

Should the times from practice carry over to qualifying, the top six drivers advancing from each group to round two would look like this:

Group 1- Briscoe, Castroneves, Bourdais, Hinchcliffe, Kanaan, Hunter-Reay. Not advancing: Aleshin Rahal, Conway, Andretti and Huertas.
Group 2- Sato, Power, Pagenaud, Dixon, Hawksworth, Wilson. Not advancing: Montoya, Muñoz, Newgarden, Kimball, Saavedra.