2011 IndyCar Rd.13--Sonoma Indy Grand Prix

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2011 IndyCar Rd.13--Sonoma Indy Grand Prix

Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 3:59 am

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Race 14 of 18

Race - Indy Grand Prix of Sonoma

Location - Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, CA

Date - Sunday, August 28th

Time & TV Schedule - Pre-Race Show-Sunday, August 28th -4:00PM Eastern - Green Flag - 4:45PM Eastern - Versus

Course Type - 2.303 Mile Road Course

Distance - 75 Laps / 172.725 Miles

Practice Sessions -
Friday, August 26th - 5:50PM -6:35PM Eastern -Group 1A & 6:35PM-7:05PM -1B
Saturday, August 27th -1:50PM -2:50PM Eastern
Sunday, August 28th -Warm Up Session - 12:00PM - 12:30PM Eastern

Qualifications - Saturday, August 27th - 5:35PM -6:55PM Eastern

2010 Pole Sitter - #12 Will Power / 1:16.5282 -108.337 mph

2010 Winner - #12 Will Power

**Note - All times listed in Eastern Time, Sonoma, CA is 3 hours behind Eastern.
Last edited by mlittle on Fri Sep 02, 2011 1:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 3:59 am

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TrackMap, Infineon Raceway
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Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 4:00 am

2010 Race Facts
Length of Race - 1 hour, 52 minutes, 34 seconds
Average Speed - 92.063 mph
Margin Of Victory - .7432 seconds
Lead Changes - 2 Times Among 2 Drivers
Caution Laps - 4 Cautions for 10 Laps
Fastest Lap - #24 JR Hildebrand -Lap #13 - 104.739 mph

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Sonoma Indy Grand Prix Entry List
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Franchitti Tops Friday Practice at Sears Point

Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 4:02 am

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---Tire conservation was the theme for many of the top drivers during Friday's lone IZOD IndyCar Series practice at Infineon Raceway. Target Chip Ganassi Racing's Dario Franchitti needed just five laps to set the best time of the day at 1:19.426, and parked his car after 10 tours.

"The Target car was different today than the test here last week," he said. "When we left the test, I had a lot of thoughts on what we needed to improve and where it was bad. I talked with my engineer a lot heading into this weekend just to make sure they understood what was feeling bad for me. He has done a great job getting the changes made and I felt good in the car out there. There is still room to improve, but I am happy with the performance today. It feels like there is some more grip compared to the test here, and I hope that the track just continued to get better as the weekend progresses."

Team Penske's Will Power turned 13 laps on Friday to run second, setting his best lap of 1:19.563 on Lap 3.

"We are very close to getting the car where we need it," said Power, who posted a 1:19.0 last week. "It just comes down to sorting out the fine details. The team will try to think about the changes we can make tonight and see where we can go tomorrow. We tested here last week and it is for sure a driver's track. It is all about getting the different sectors to come together. It can be tough to get the balance just right. My weekend here last year was perfect and those are pretty hard to come by, but Verizon Team Penske is definitely aiming for that."

Power's teammate, three-time Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves, followed in third with a lap of 1:19.663, while Franchitti's teammate, two-time series champion Scott Dixon, did nine total laps and ran fourth with a 1:20.042.

"The Guidepoint Systems car was really good today - we had a great balance on the car right off of the truck," said Castroneves. "Certainly we still have some work to do, but this is good start to the weekend. Now we just have to do our best to keep the momentum moving forward towards a good qualifying result tomorrow and Sunday in the race."

Giorgio Pantano, standing in for the injured Justin Wilson, continued to find speed at Sonoma, setting a lap of 1:20.129 to round out the top 5.

"We are OK, but I'm sure there's a lot we can do," he said. "A lot we can gain from what we did today. We just need to check the data and work with the engineers to see where we can find more overall grip. I'm sure tomorrow we will be closer to where we want to be."

With 20 drivers having participated in last week's test at the track, drivers like Sebastien Bourdais (sixth), Ana Beatriz (seventh), E.J. Viso (eighth), Oriol Servia (ninth) and James Jakes (10th) proved just how valuable the extra setup time happened to be. Only one driver inside the top 10 (Castroneves) missed the test.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Andretti Autosport. Despite sending three of its four drivers to test at Sonoma (Danica Patrick was in Montreal for the NASCAR Nationwide race), the team was off the pace on Friday with Loudon winner Ryan Hunter-Reay leading the internecine battle in 12th.

"It was a pretty challenging first day for us," he said. "We'll have to change a lot of the settings for Saturday. It was different from last week's test. We felt the car was okay last week. That wasn't the case today. Just overall lack of grip in the Team DHL/Circle K/Sun Drop car. But I think we can turn it around for Saturday."

Marco Andretti (15th), Mike Conway (18th) and Patrick (26th), as has often been the case in 2011, will need to overcome a poor showing on the first day of running if they hope to be competitive in qualifying and the race.

Of the remaining drivers, Charlie Kimball surprised by out-pacing his teammate, Graham Rahal, to end the session in 13th. Rahal was .0031 behind in 14th.

Ryan Briscoe struggled in down in 16th in his Team Penske entry, 1.2 seconds off Franchitti's best time. Briscoe, like Castroneves did not test last week, but the two experienced different results on Friday.

"We feel good about the laps we did today in the Penske Truck Rental car, though the speed doesn't really show it," said Briscoe. "We learned a few things in practice and where we need to go. Now we'll focus on getting into it more tomorrow to keep improving."

Local favorite JR Hildebrand could do no better than 19th, and Tony Kanaan, currently fifth in points, was 22nd on his first day with KV Racing Technical Director John d#$% overseeing the engineering on his car.

"I did not test here last week so this was my first time on track since last year and I am working with a new engineer this weekend, so today about getting to know each other," said Kanaan. "I think it is obvious we have a lot of work to do with the car before tomorrow's qualifying. Fortunately, we have a lot of data to review and another practice tomorrow morning before qualifying."

Simon Pagenaud, who went through extraordinary measures to fill in for Simona de Silvestro this weekend, was 25th on the time sheets after turning his first-ever laps of the track during practice.

While most of the field executed a spin or ran long in one of the braking zones, just one accident took place when Alex Tagliani found trouble at the 35-minute mark of the 75-minute session, hitting a tire barrier after locking a brake in the Turn 3 complex.
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Plowman P1 In Session 2

Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 5:58 pm

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---A few double takes were required at the conclusion of Saturday morning's one-hour practice session as Sam Schmidt Motorsports/AFS Racing rookie Martin Plowman found himself atop the field.

Plowman pushed his No. 17 car to a lap of 1:19.035 on the faster Firestone Red tires, a scant 0.004 ahead of Dario Franchitti, who topped Friday's lone practice session.

Team Penske's Will Power was also close to Plowman's time, running a lap of 1:19.040, followed by JR Hildebrand in fourth.

After ending Friday in 19th, Hildebrand's improvement was only bettered by Plowman, who ran 20th on Friday.

The surprises continued as Dale Coyne Racing's James Jakes ended P2 in fifth.

Of the remaining runners with a positive result, Ryan Briscoe improved from 16th to sixth overnight, Sebastian Saavedra finished eighth and Ho-Pin Tung was 11th.

Newman Haas Racing had a frustrating time with James Hinchcliffe in 19th and Oriol Servia in 21st, and Andretti Autosport struggled once again with Mike Conway serving as the only one of their four cars to crack the top 10.

Rank, Driver, Gap, Best Lap
1 Martin Plowman 0.0000 1:19.0350
2 Dario Franchitti 0.0040 1:19.0390
3 Will Power 0.0053 1:19.0403
4 JR Hildebrand 0.0893 1:19.1243
5 James Jakes 0.1022 1:19.1372
6 Scott Dixon 0.1079 1:19.1429
7 Ryan Briscoe 0.2212 1:19.2562
8 Sebastian Saavedra 0.3258 1:19.3608
9 Mike Conway 0.4204 1:19.4554
10 Helio Castroneves 0.4231 1:19.4581
11 Ho-Pin Tung 0.6689 1:19.7039
12 Graham Rahal 0.7166 1:19.7516
13 Giorgio Pantano 0.7644 1:19.7994
14 Sebastien Bourdais 0.8028 1:19.8378
15 EJ Viso 0.8497 1:19.8847
16 Danica Patrick 0.8558 1:19.8908
17 Takuma Sato 0.8646 1:19.8996
18 Charlie Kimball 0.9480 1:19.9830
19 James Hinchcliffe 0.9517 1:19.9867
20 Ryan Hunter-Reay 0.9794 1:20.0144
21 Oriol Servia 0.9807 1:20.0157
22 Marco Andretti 0.9903 1:20.0253
23 Tony Kanaan 1.0253 1:20.0603
24 Simon Pagenaud 1.0814 1:20.1164
25 Ana Beatriz 1.1060 1:20.1410
26 Alex Tagliani 1.4870 1:20.5220
27 Vitor Meira 1.7132 1:20.7482
28 Ed Carpenter 1.8373 1:20.8723
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Penske 1-2-3 For Sunday's Race

Post by mlittle » Sun Aug 28, 2011 6:00 pm

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---Will Power scored his sixth pole of the year at Infineon Raceway on Saturday, leading a Team Penske 1-2-3. The Australian led every phase of qualifying, easily out-running teammates Ryan Briscoe in second and Helio Castroneves in third with a lap of 1:18.601.

“This qualifying session was as perfect as it could go,” said Power. “We were a little concerned after practice and didn’t know if we had the pace or not, but we made some good changes before qualifying. We were able to put a perfect lap together that was mistake free and hit all of the sectors and that was the key to posting the quickest lap. I am very happy with the efforts of Verizon Team Penske and having all three Team Penske cars up top today was really indicative of the work we have done. We were struggling a little bit on road courses so we have worked hard on improving the car and this is a result of the hard work.”

Briscoe was enthused to find himself on the front row with Power.

“It’s great," he said. "Team Penske’s come out strong here. We really need to keep pushing hard here. A top 3 starting point is the way to go.”

Castroneves was overflowing with emotion after turning in a strong qualifying performance.

“I’m extremely happy for Team Penske," he said. "We’re all working very close together. Will came and tested here and he gave us exactly what to do.”

Power's decisive pole came at the expense of his main championship rival, Dario Franchitti, who could do no better than fourth.

Franchitti's lap of 1:19.146 was more than a half-second--0.5447--behind Power.

"We worked really hard on getting both of the Target cars ready for qualifying and to have good balance on the Firestone black tires," said the Scot. "We tried putting the red tires on and the car was terrible. We tried to put up a fast lap and get the time we needed. We made a couple of changes throughout the session but just didn’t quite have it. We have a lot of work to do tonight because we are going to have to use the red tires for one segment of the race tomorrow."

Franchitti's teammate, Scott Dixon, ran fifth and Newman Haas Racing rookie James Hinchcliffe set the sixth-fastest time.

“The Target car was good this morning in cool weather but once the track heated up we really struggled with the grip," said Dixon. "I’m surprised we didn’t gain that much on red tires and Penske seemed to stay the same as what they were the morning, so it’s a little bit frustrating. We obviously messed up quite a bit there. I think this is just about our worst qualifying on road courses this year."

Hinchcliffe said sitting amongst the sport's top drivers during the post-qualifying press conference was somewhat surreal.

"I feel very out of place up there," he said with a laugh. "I sat at the back of the room for the first five minutes. It's great for us. The weekend hadn't been that great for us, and to pull ourselves out of that and qualify really well is something the team should be really proud of."

Behind Hinchcliffe, Long Beach winner Mike Conway salvaged a bit of hope for Andretti Autosport. With teammates Marco Andretti (14th), Ryan Hunter-Reay (19th) and Danica Patrick (25th) well down the running order, Conway won't have much help during Sunday's 80-lap race.

"The car is pretty good until the tires start to fall off," said Conway. "You can get about two or three laps with the red (Firestone) tires in qualifying. If you get a good rhythm, you can improve on your fourth lap. But it is tough. I'm sorry that qualifying didn't work out for the rest of the guys because they took my direction on the setup."

Dale Coyne Racing's mid-season improvement continues as Sebastien Bourdais qualified eighth, while E.J. Viso--like Conway at Andretti--was the only KV Racing entry with a positive qualifying session, ending up ninth.

KV's Takuma Sato (16th) struggled for grip, and Tony Kanaan (21st), who's had a generally poor qualifying record this year, continued the trend as he and new engineer John d#$% build a rapport.

"It's just disappointing," said the Brazilian. "We couldn't find a good balance for the car both yesterday and today and that translated to a bad qualifying run. We'll work overnight to find a solution for tomorrow's warmup and see how that goes. Hopefully we can do better than this for the race."

Possibly the most impressive qualifying performance of the day went Dreyer & Reinbold Racing rookie Ana Beatriz, who completed the top 10.

Beatriz not only earned her best start to date, but she also put herself ahead of highly lauded teammate Giorgio Pantano, who qualified 11th.

"I’m really happy that we were able to make it into the fast twelve," she said. "Unfortunately, in the second qualifying we didn’t quite get the grip that we had in the first session, but I’m happy with where we ended up. I’m really proud of the Ipiranga crew and I would like to thank Dreyer & Reinbold Racing for all of their hard work. We have been pushing really hard and it’s great to be in the top 10. We will push hard tomorrow during the race and hopefully we can get a good result.”

Alex Tagliani completed the Firestone Fast 12 for Sam Schmidt Motorsports, and after qualifying on the second row last year, the French-Canadian wasn't feeling overly optimistic.

“It was alright, but I knew the lap time we needed to do needed to be in the 78s (seconds) and we just couldn’t get there,” he said. “The frustrating thing is, we came here without testing. Everybody else here came here to test the new tire and, with no time, we needed to do some miracles."

Ganassi Racing Graham Rahal was the first driver to miss the cut, and like Tagliani, wasn't in a happy place after qualifying.

“We just missed [on the setup] a little bit," he said. "The car was incredibly loose. It was overboard. It was an absolute handful. This hasn’t been one of our best weekends so we’ll have to do a lot of work tonight”

Of the remaining runners, Newman Haas Racing's Oriol Servia had a miserable time on the way to qualifying a rather uncharacteristic 18th. “You just miss a couple of tenths of a second and you miss the cut," he said. "That’s the story. It’s just frustrating. You obviously want to start up front.”

Local favorite JR Hildebrand was mired back in 20th, while Simon Pagenaud, with only handful of laps around the 2.2-mile track, qualified 22nd while deputizing for Simona de Silvestro. Ho-Pin Tung will start 24th for his first IndyCar Series race, and Charlie Kimball, after running competitively at the last few rounds, had no answers for the tricky 12-turn track.
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Sonoma Rewind

Post by mlittle » Fri Sep 02, 2011 1:45 am

Speed Channel: Sonoma Rewind

--Speed Channel's Marshall Pruett gives a broad overview of this past weekend's Sonoma Indy Grand Prix; sections include........
(1)The Gamer: Looking at 2011's resident "super-sub", Simon Pagenaud
(2)Jockeying For The TEAM Transfer Spot: Possible changes afoot w/the 2012 purse payouts
(3)2011 ROY: 2011 Rookie of the Year is beginning to heat up btwn. J.R. Hildebrand(Panther Racing) & James Hinchcliffe(Newman-Haas Racing)
(4)Why Not Wait Five Races: Or, how KV Racing is adjusting to the departure of lead engineer Michael Cannon
(5)Not Again: Once again, IndyCar Race Control becomes a story during the course of Sunday's race
(6)Post-Danica Apocalypse? Looking ahead to 2012 when Danica Patrick officially heads over to NASCAR; what will the IndyCar landscape look like?
(7)Time To Open Up Turn 11? Several teams & drivers have concerns about the current turn 11 layout on Sonoma's Indy Course and would like to see the series use the long hairpin layout rather than the shorter layout
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