Testing SpeedwayMedia.com

Tag: Barber Motorsports Park

  • Indy Lights: Sebastian Saavedra wins Pole for Grand Prix of Alabama

    Indy Lights: Sebastian Saavedra wins Pole for Grand Prix of Alabama

    [media-credit name=”IndyCar.com” align=”alignleft” width=”300″][/media-credit]With a lap of one minute and 16 seconds, Sebastian Saavedra won the Sonoco Pole Award for the 45-lap Grand Prix of Alabama on April 1st on the 17-turn Barber Motorsports Park road course.

    “It was a very tough qualifying session,” he says. “Very wet in a couple of places and you don’t want it to be wet. A very big thanks to the No. 27 guys. They did an amazing job. This car was unbelievably fast all through the weekend. It was also very fast last week in St. Pete. It feels very good to have our first pole of the season and we will move forward from here.”

    Tristan Vautier will start in second, beside Saavedra, for his second consecutive front row start. He made his Firestone Indy Lights debut last week from the pole at St. Petersburg.

    “I’m happy and frustrated at the same time,” Vautier says. “I’m happy because I feel like we made a big step from practice, and we improved the car a lot. The team and my engineer made the right calls for the car. I’m happy because I feel we could have had this pole, but I’m frustrated because with the red flag we didn’t get to use our last set of tires, we just put it on and then it was red, we just did a warmup lap. But you know, we took a risk in waiting longer and it didn’t work out, so great job from these guys at Andretti/AFS, they made the right call in qualifying and were strong from the start of practice here. So well deserved, and we’ll do our best to do it in the race.”

    Carlos Munoz will start third for his career best start while Esteban Guerrieri starts fourth for his 16th consecutive top-five start, which is a series record.

    There was one incident on the session involving Oliver Webb.

    The Grand Prix of Alabama is set to take place on April 1st with the green flag dropped at 5pm EST. The race will be shown live on the NBC Sports Network.

  • Helio Castroneves Scores Pole Position at Barber Motorsports Park

    Helio Castroneves Scores Pole Position at Barber Motorsports Park

    [media-credit id=4 align=”alignleft” width=”266″][/media-credit]Team Penske driver Helio Castroneves won the IZOD IndyCar Series pole for the Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama at Barber Motorsports Park for his first pole in more than a year. Last week’s race winner got the pole with a best time of one minute, 10 seconds during the Firestone Fast Six session.

    “The AAA Team Penske crew did a great job, and it will keep us in good shape,” Castroneves says. “Unfortunately, we were the first ones out there because of no practice this morning. The red tires gave us a lot of bonus, so I apparently made it. We made some changes and that put us good for second qualifying. In the end, Will (Power) and some other competitors not making it was tough, but it is better to be lucky than good. (Strategist) John (Erickson), (race engineer) Ron (Ruzewski) and I were just going through the stuff and The Firestone red tires were great and have a lot of grip. The Firestone tires were able to give me Top 6 and thanks again Firestone.”

    The last pole for Castroneves came at Motegi in 2010 as this marks the 37th pole of his career and the third consecutive pole at Barber for Penske.

    Andretti Autorsport driver James Hinchcliffe qualified second for his career best start in IndyCar.

    “Obviously a great start for us to be on the outside of the front row,” he says. “It’s my best start and it’s a great result after the way practice went yesterday and being rained out, then being fogged out this morning. We only had 14 dry laps coming into qualifying. We knew we had to take a little bit of a swing at it, and give it to the Andretti Autosport guys because that green Go Daddy guy was quick. As soon as we pulled out and we got into the Fast Six and we had only done I think one quick lap on those tires and two before the red came out.”

    Target Chip Ganassi driver Scott Dixon qualified in third, followed by Mike Conway and Tony Kanaan.

    Will Power scored the best lap of the session in round one for a record lap of one minute, 9.8529 seconds. He would transfer to round two via that lap, but didn’t get to round three and Firestone Fast Six, as he ended up in the ninth at the end of the season. Last year, Power won the event after starting on the pole.

    “”It’s a pretty frustrating qualifying result,” he says. “Man, we had a great Verizon car today. We had a good first session and we were ready to fight for the pole. I know INDYCAR threw the red flag there but I’m not sure why they didn’t allow our fast lap. It’s definitely going to be tough starting ninth tomorrow, but we know we’ve got a fast car. We have to have a good start and be strong on the restarts and hopefully work our way up front.”

    The Honda Indy Grand Prix of Alabama 90-lap event is set to take place on Sunday at 2p.m. ET and will be shown live on NBC Sports Network.

  • IZOD IndyCar Drivers Continue to Prepare For 2012 Race Season

    IZOD IndyCar Drivers Continue to Prepare For 2012 Race Season

    [media-credit name=”indycar.com” align=”alignright” width=”258″][/media-credit]In an effort to try to figure out the new IndyCar chassis the quickest, many drivers are chose to take part in the test session on March 13th and 14th at Barber Motorsports Park. The test at Barber was a private test, so therefore data will not be available for viewing.

    It is hard to tell which team has an advantage this early in the season looking at test, as some are working on aerodynamics while others are working on race set-ups.

    “Any track time that we get is so valuable,” Ryan Briscoe says. “As we get closer to St. Pete, every bit of mileage gets more and more important. From getting used to all the new features on the car like the brakes or the clutch and other things like that, those are things that we will have to have mastered before the first race. I did a fair bit of testing during the winter and I feel quite acclimatized to the car, but you can never have too much running time.”

    Despite this being in consideration, drivers do pay attention to how their fellows competitors are running.

    “It’s super important to do tests days like these where there are other cars out because you do have to get a feel for how quickly other people are figuring things out,” JR Hilderband says. “At the same time, when (Sebring) gets gripped up, it’s like no place else. It’s rough like a street course and super grippy like a road course. We try to take it for what it is, but it’s great to do this much running this close to the season.”

    So far, it looks like two-time IndyCar Series Champion Scott Dixon has the advantage as he led the Open Test at Sebring International Raceway.

    The Chevrolet teams testing at Barber test were all three Team Penske drivers (Briscoe, Helio Castroneves and Will Power), Panther Racing’s Hilderbrand, all three cars from KV Racing Technology (E.J. Viso, Rubens Barrichello and Tony Kanaan), Ed Carpenter Racing’s entry driven by Ed Carpenter and all three cars for Andretti Autosport (Andretti, James Hinchcliffe and Ryan Hunter-Reay).

    The Honda teams testing at Barber were both entries from Dale Coyne Racing (Justin Wilson and James Jakes), Service Central Chip Ganassi Racing’s Graham Rahal, Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing’s Josef Newgarden and Nova Nordisk Chip Ganassi Racing’s Charlie Kimball.

    Elsewhere, Dario Franchitti and Dixon were testing at Homestead-Miami on March 14th.