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| Will Power was all smiles after first practice |
Will Power and Hélio Castroneves were separated by 0.0051 seconds in first practice as Power ran the fastest lap, 32.5220-second lap at 221.389 MPH. It wasn't just the championship contenders who were fast in first practice. Chevrolet had eighth of their ten entries in the top ten and took the top six times.
Ed Carpenter was third fastest, nearly three-tenths back of Power. He was followed by three Ganassi drivers. Scott Dixon was fourth with Tony Kanaan rounding out the top five and Charlie Kimball in sixth. The three teammates were covered by 0.0137 seconds. Chevrolet enters Fontana having won seven consecutive pole positions and five consecutive races.
The fastest Honda driver and fastest rookie in the session was Mikhail Aleshin. He has three top tens in five oval starts. Juan Pablo Montoya was eighth quickest followed by Josef Newgarden. Ganassi got all four cars in the top ten with Ryan Briscoe ending up tenth in the first session.
Ryan Hunter-Reay leads five consecutive Hondas on the time sheet in eleventh. The last driver mathematically eligible for the IndyCar championship, Simon Pagenaud was twelfth fastest, 0.4593 seconds behind Power. It was tic-tac-toe, three Andretti drivers in a row in thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth. James Hinchcliffe led Carlos Muñoz and Marco Andretti. The gap from Aleshin in seventh and Hinchcliffe in thirteenth was 0.1054 seconds.
Sébastien Bourdais was sixteenth quickest, just ahead of his former teammate Graham Rahal. Takuma Sato was eighteenth with the Brits Justin Wilson and Jack Hawksworth rounding out the top twenty. Colombians Sébastien Saavedra and Carlos Huertas round out the drivers on the timesheet with Huertas the lone driver not within a second of Power. Saavedra was 0.8660 second back while Huertas trailed Power by 1.5203 seconds. Huertas ran a session-high 49 laps while Penske duo of Power and Castroneves each completed only nine laps in the first session.
IndyCar qualifying will take place at 5:15 p.m. ET. Simon Pagenaud is the first of championship contenders to make a qualifying attempt as he is the eleventh driver scheduled to make a run. Will Power is scheduled to be the thirteenth driver on track and Hélio Castroneves is scheduled to be the last driver to make a qualifying attempt.
The final practice session of the 2014 Verizon IndyCar Series season is scheduled for 10:15 p.m. ET and will be a thirty-minute session.
