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| Takuma Sato Was Fastest On Day One |
After a lackluster Barber test, Graham Rahal was ninth and second fastest in the two session. It was the turn around Rahal Letterman Lanigan has been looking for since Takuma Sato wrecked while in the top five at the 2012 season finale at Fontana. Is this just some early season magic or the signs of things to come in 2014? We will have to wait and see.
Speaking of Sato... he was fastest on day one but that means nothing with the former Formula One driver. Time and time again we have seen Sato at the top of a timesheet only to throw it away in a race. He could win pole tomorrow and then throw it away on cold tires exiting the pit lane.
The Honda teams had a good first day taking the top three in the first practice and top two in the second. James Hinchcliffe and Justin Wilson were the top two in the first session. They dropped to seventh and nineteenth in the second session. It appeared to be a good start for Andretti Autosport as Ryan Hunter-Reay was twelfth on day one with Carlos Muñoz thirteenth. Marco Andretti was eighteenth on the day but with the depth of the field he was ahead of Juan Pablo Montoya and Mike Conway.
Speaking of Montoya... after a good test at Barber, the first day at St. Petersburg wasn't great but as I pointed out in the Track Walk, Montoya's success on street courses has never been good. While he has two win, he averages a finish of 15.5 on street circuits.
Montoya's teammates faired much better on day one. Will Power and Helio Castroneves picked up where they left off in 2013. They were third and fourth. Though they were in the top five, I was a little surprised that Power didn't shoot to the top like he seems to always do in a practice session.
While Carlos Muñoz was thirteenth, the top rookie was Jack Hawksworth. The Brit was eleventh on day one driving for Bryan Herta Autosport. He could be a surprise tomorrow in qualifying. Meanwhile, Mikhail Aleshin was fourteenth. Carlos Huertas was last on day one but he picked up greatly. The Colombian only completed six laps in the first session but was within 1.7866 seconds of Sato's fastest lap.
Just ahead of Huertas on the timesheet was Sebastián Saavedra. Let's not be surprised if these two Colombians are rounding out time sheets often in 2014.
With that said, think about this for a second. The IndyCar grid is covered by less than two seconds. Wow! Drivers such as Huertas and Saavedra may not be the ideal drivers fans want on the grid but you have to give them credit. Someone has to be last in a session when the field is deep.
Idea For IndyCar Qualifying
I like qualifying how it is but I was wondering if IndyCar could take a page for the MotoGP playbook and make these practice session slightly matter.
In case you don't know how MotoGP qualifying works let me explain it to you:
The top ten fastest times from the first three practice session automatically start in the second round. The remaining bikes compete in the first round with the top two times from round one advancing to the next round and competing for pole.
My idea: Take the top ten from the two Friday practice session and have them automatically start in the Fast 12. The remaining cars take part in round one with the top two advancing to the Fast 12. After those cars advance, the session would go as it is already formatted. The top six from that session move to the Fast 6 while the remaining cars fill 7th-12th on the grid.
Why change? It makes Friday practice matter a little bit more. It allows the top ten from Friday to save a set of tires for what ever they may please. It makes qualifying go a little faster. Instead of two sessions of 10 minutes of round one, you can do one, 15-minute session for round one, a 10-minute session for round two and I would shorten the Fast 6 session to five minutes to get the cars on the track immediately. Plus I thing it makes IndyCar qualifying a little bit more television friendly as you could easily get this qualifying session into a one-hour television window.
What would it this format look like this weekend?
Top Ten from Friday and starting in the Second Round: Sato, Rahal, Power, Castroneves, Pagenaud, Hinchcliffe, Wilson, Briscoe, Dixon, Bourdais.
Starting in the First Round: Hawksworth, Hunter-Reay, Muñoz, Aleshin, Newgarden, Kanaan, Kimball, Andretti, Montoya, Conway, Saavedra, Huertas.
Dario's in the News
He may be retired but Dario Franchitti made the most waves on the first day of the IndyCar season. The four-time IndyCar champion said in a press conference today and was asked about the rivalry between Chip Ganassi Racing and Team Penske and had this to say:
I think it's been a great rivalry. I think it's been going on for 25 years now. I think Roger Penske is a class, class operator. He's first class. I thought Tim's comments weren't in any way. I thought they were ‑‑ yeah, I think they kind of summed him up a little bit. If I had the resources that he's had in his hands, I would be a little upset with the success ratio they have had recently. I'm very proud of the record that the Ganassi organization and the Target organization has had.That led to the following response from Team Penske President Tim Cindric to the USA Today's Jeff Olsen:
"Chip wants to think of it as a rivalry, but we don't," said Tim Cindric, president of Team Penske. "It does fit the definition of an intense competition, but rivalries take place over a long period of time. If you want to think of it in baseball terms, it would be the Yankees and the Florida Marlins — a team with a long history against a younger team that came on strong and won a couple of World Series. Maybe that's not a good analogy, but I don't see it as the Yankees and Red Sox."Franchitti waits until he is retired to say how he feels about Tim Cindric? This is the kind of stuff IndyCar needs from active drivers, not recently retired guys that we all know and love. I like Franchitti as much as the next guy but it's a little too late. It's like when we heard Fran Tarkenton talking about Brett Favre a few years ago. Who cares?
Now, Scott Dixon taking shots at Cindric like he did last year after Baltimore? Fine. Let's see where that goes. If Graham Rahal wants to bust Mikhail Aleshin's chops for blocking at the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona, fantastic. Ryan Hunter-Reay wants to give Juan Pablo Montoya a piece of his mind? Great. James Hinchcliffe wants to drop the gloves and land some haymakers on Alex Tagliani at Indianapolis after the two made contact? I hope there is a camera for that and I hope the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens are playing one another in the Stanley Cup Playoffs just to add more fuel to the fire North of the Border.
IndyCar need active drivers grabbing headlines. Not retired drivers for how they feel about current crew members.
