2008 IRL Rd. 4--RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300

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What an interesting weekend it was for North American Motorsports...........first we start in the Land of the Rising Sun, where the Race was pushed back a day thanks to persistent rains and trackside weepers and then history was made the very next day as AGR's Danica Patrick became the first woman to win a major, top-level AOWR event........then we move to the other side of the Pacific, to the streets of LongBeach where another female racer, Switzerland's Simona de Silvestro, won the Atlantic Championship race(the second woman to win the Atlantic race at the Beach) and then ChampCar closed its' books with its' series finale and another first-time winner emerged as KV Racing Technology's Will Power led all but two of the 83-lap race.

Now all the teams, both veteran IndyCar and incoming ChampCar teams, are headed to America's heartland and the 1.5-mile Kansas Speedway, site of this coming weekend's RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300. Since joining the schedule in 2001, Kansas Speedway has also seen its' share of exciting action and finishes...........
--2001: Eddie Cheever wins the first IRL race at Kansas, giving Infiniti its' first win as an engine supplier
--2002: Foyt Racing's Airton Dare got the jump on veterans Sam Hornish, Jr. and Gil de Ferran, passing both on a late restart to win
--2004: Rahal-Letterman Racing teammates Buddy Rice and Vitor Meira set the second-closest finish in series history as Rice edged out Meira by 51/10,000ths' of a second(.0051 sec)
--2005: then-RLR driver Danica Patrick won the first of her three poles at Kansas(the other two pole wins were at Chicagoland and Kentucky)
--2006: Team Penske's Sam Hornish, Jr. won in a late-race duel with Target/Ganassi's Dan Wheldon to win, giving team owner Roger Penske his first Kansas win
--2007: Wheldon checked out on the field to win, leading 177 of 200 laps
--2008: Who knows.......isn't that why they run the races?


Event schedule for the RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300?
note...all times local(US CDT; -1 hr US EDT/-5 hrs GMT)
~~Practice Session #1, 8:45-1015 am, 26 April 2008
~~Practice Session #2, 11-12 pm, 26 April 2008
~~Qualifying, 2:10-3:40 pm, 26 April 2008
~~RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300, 4 pm, 27 April 2008, ESPN2
--domestic AM radio, IMS Radio Network
--domestic satellite radio, XM Satellite Radio Chs. 144-145
--international simulcast(TV/shortwave) courtesy of the United States Armed Forces Network

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~~Event} RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300, round 4 of the 2008 IndyCar Series season
~~Where} Kansas Speedway, Kansas City, Ks.
~~When} 5pm(US EDT), 27 April 2008

~~Past Winners........................
Eddie Cheever, Jr., 2001
Airton Dare, 2002
Bryan Herta, 2003
Buddy Rice, 2004
Tony Kanaan, 2005
Sam Hornish, Jr., 2006
Dan Wheldon, 2007

~~Track specifics..............................
Frontstretch 2685 ft. banked at 10 degrees
Backstretch 2207 ft. banked at 5 degrees
Turns banked at 15 degrees
Track width from SAFER barrier to track apron 55 ft

~~Mid-Week Storylines from the Heartland.............................
(1)One down........more to come? In winning this past weekend's Bridgestone Indy Japan 300, Danica Patrick became the 37th driver in IndyCar Series history to win in IndyCar competition; of those 37, 22 went on to win multiple times....and of those 22, 18 did so back-to-back.....can she add her name to either list this weekend?
(2)First repeat winner at Kansas? Three drivers--Buddy Rice, Tony Kanaan and Dan Wheldon--can, should any of them win Sunday, become the first repeat winner at Kansas, or will an eighth driver add his or her name to the winners' tally?
(3)Brickyard tune-up? Being the last pre-Indy 500 event on the schedule, teams will try to use this weekend as a tune up for the month of May......and no one has more to gain that Luczo-Dragon Racing, which makes its' 2008 debut with driver Tomas Scheckter at the helm. At Indy last year, the team finished 5th w/Ryan Briscoe at the wheel; this year the South African takes the reins; Scheckter has 4 top-10 finishes at Kansas in his career
(4)Is Rahal-Letterman Racing back at the front? In 2004 and 2005, Kansas could've been a second home for the Hilliard, Ohio-based squad. In 2004, teammates Buddy Rice and Vitor Meira raced to finish w/Rice winning by .0051 seconds; in 2005, Meira finished 3rd while then-rookie Danica Patrick won the first of three poles that year. This past weekend, RLR's Ryan Hunter-Reay has notched 2 top-10's, both on the 1.5-mile ovals. Can he add a third top-10 to the list?

Kansas Notes................................
~~Sunday's RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300 will be the eighth IndyCar Series event held at Kansas Speedway
~~15 drivers entered have competed at Kansas previously; of those, 7 have led laps(Dan Wheldon--333, Tomas Scheckter--165, Tony Kanaan--108, Scott Dixon--103, Buddy Rice--95, Vitor Meira--37 and Helio Castroneves--16)
~~3 Indy 500 winners(Castroneves, 2001-2002; Rice, 2004 and Wheldon, 2005) are on the entry list
~~3 IndyCar Series champions(Dixon--2003, Kanaan--2004 and Wheldon--2005) are on the entry list
~~3 IndyCar Series ROY winners(Patrick--2005, Andretti--2006 and Hunter-Reay, 2007) are on the entry list

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RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300 Entry List.............................

A.J. Foyt, IV, #2 Joost/Indy Vision
Helio Castroneves, #3 Team Penske
Vitor Meira, #4 National Guard/Delphi
Oriol Servia, #5 Plantronics
Ryan Briscoe, #6 Team Penske
Danica Patrick, #7 Motorola
(R)Will Power, #8 Aussie Vineyards
Scott Dixon, #9 Target
Dan Wheldon, #10 Target
Tony Kanaan, #11 Team 7-11
Tomas Scheckter, #12 Symantec 360
Darren Manning, #14 ABC Supply Co.
Buddy Rice, #15 RollCoater/Racing for Kids
Ryan Hunter-Reay, #17 Ethanol
Bruno Junquiera, #18 Z-Line Designs
(R)Mario Moraes, #19 Sonny's Real Pit BBQ
Ed Carpenter, #20 Menards/DirecTV
Milka Duno, #23 CITGO
(R)Jay Howard, #24 Cirrus Aircraft
Marty Roth, #25 Cirrus Aircraft
Marco Andretti, #26 Forsythe
(R)Hideki Mutoh, #27 Formula Dream
(R)E.J. Viso, #33 PDVSA
(R)Jaime Camara, #34 Sangari
(R)Enrique Bernoldi, #36 Sangari
(R)Justin Wilson, #02 McDonald's
(R)Graham Rahal, #06 Hole in the Wall Camps

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Officials with Bridgestone/Firestone have released the tire specifications for this weekend's RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300 at Kansas Speedway..........

~~2 different tire compounds will be utilized for the race; the left-side tire compounds will be new for Kansas while the right-side compounds were previously used at Kentucky in 2007 and at Homestead back in March
~~each team will be allotted 9 sets of Firestone Firehawk tires for the race; the tire stagger for the right-side tires is set at 0.46 inches(FYI, stagger is what helps Indycars turn better on oval tracks and is created by making the right-rear tires bigger than the left-rear(the stagger amt. varies by specifc oval track)

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Due to sponsorship woes with Opes Prime, which went into receivership in Australia recently, Conquest Racing announced earlier today that they have signed former Andretti-Green Racing Indy Lights driver Jaime Camara to drive the #34 Sangari Dallara/Honda for the remainder of the season, beginning this weekend in Kansas. Conquest stated that due to the ongoing problems involving sponsor Opes Prime and associate sponsor ARES necessitated the driver change as Camara will replace Franck Perera, who will remain with the team in a reserve/testing role.

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Qualifying Order, RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300...........................

~~Group 1} Wilson, Camara, Duno, Howard, Briscoe, Viso, Servia, Mutoh, Junquiera, Andretti, Hunter-Reay, Rice and Power
~~Group 2} Dixon, Rahal, Castroneves, Meira, Roth, Manning, Scheckter, Patrick, Foyt, Kanaan, Carpenter, Bernoldi, Moraes and Wheldon


note...practice session #1 is an all-cars practice; practice session #2 is divided into 2 segments w/group 1 running the first 30 minutes and group 2 running the last 30 minutes

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Weekend Update..........

Series officials, concerned about the cool temperatures this morning(Firestone requires a track &/or ambient temperature above 50 degrees[F] for use of their Firehawk tires), have changed today's schedule..........

Practice Session #1, 9:30-11am
Practice Session #2, 12-12:45pm
Qualifying Session, 2:30-4 pm
all times US CDT; both practices will be an "all-cars" practice

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Kansas Practice Session #1 Summary...........................
--after consulting with Firestone officials, race control allowed the first practice session to commence despite the ambient temps being at 47 degrees; track temps were in the 60-65 deg. range
--one crash during the session; a right-rear wheel nut broke on the #19 Sonny's Real Pit BBQ Dallara/Honda of Mario Moraes, sending him hard into the turn 1 wall
--most of the session saw drivers getting some wicked tows off of one another; however, a couple of drivers, most notably Tomas Scheckter in the #12 Synmantec 360 D/H, set fast times without the benefit of being in another car's slipstream or "draft"
--towards the end of the session, fast lap of the session was exchanged several times btwn. the #10 Target D/H of Dan Wheldon, the #9 Target D/H of Wheldon's TGR teammate, Scott Dixon, the #7 Motorola D/H of Danica Patrick and the #27 Formula Dream D/H of Patrick's AGR teammate, Hideki Mutoh.......Wheldon, ultimately got the fastest time of the session

Practice Session #1 top-5...................
1} Dan Wheldon, Target/Ganassi Racing, 25.599 sec/213.759 mph
2} Scott Dixon, Target/Ganassi Racing, 25.618 sec/213.600 mph
3}(R)Hideki Mutoh, Andretti-Green Racing, 25.713 sec/212.814 mph
4} Vitor Meira, Panther Racing, 25.788 sec/212.190 mph
5} Danica Patrick, Andretti-Green Racing, 25.816 sec/211.962 mph

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Kansas Practice Session #2 Summary.........................
--walking through the paddock area between practices was interesting........repairs on the #19 car are proceeding along and Dale Coyne Racing is confident they can get the car fixed for the race(but not, it appears, in time for qualifying later in the afternoon, which means he likely will start in last spot)
--rookie Jay Howard was docked 15 minutes of practice time for "blocking" the #12 of Tomas Scheckter early in practice(from my vantage point along the inside wall btwn. turn 2 and the backstretch, all he did was drift up a groove w/no obvious intent to block Scheckter...... ). On the other hand, both Howard and Scheckter were fast w/out tows during practice and later on, they spent a good chunk of practice racing side-by-side w/out any problems

Practice Session #2 top-5...........................
1} Scott Dixon, Target/Ganassi Racing, 25.476 sec/214.792 mph
2} Dan Wheldon, Target/Ganassi Racing, 25.569 sec/214.013 mph
3} Danica Patrick, Andretti-Green Racing, 25.680 sec/213.086 mph
4} Helio Castroneves, Team Penske, 25.720 sec/212.754 mph
5} Vitor Meira, Panther Racing, 25.748 sec/212.524 mph

[Southernman]

As usual I voted for Dixon. It's going to be interesting to see how well Danica does after winning last week. The media attention she got after last week will make things difficult for her. I've watch plenty of sports people in a number of sports fail after success. I just hope that is not the case for her.

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As usual I voted for Dixon. It's going to be interesting to see how well Danica does after winning last week. The media attention she got after last week will make things difficult for her. I've watch plenty of sports people in a number of sports fail after success. I just hope that is not the case for her.

At the very least, Southernman, Danica won't have to hear the question, "When will you win a race?"; maybe I'm an optimist, but I think the odds are good that she'll back up the win at Motegi with one at Kansas(there's never been a repeat winner here since they started racing at Kansas in 2001.......during both practices she ran with the big dogs[5th in session #1, 3rd in session #2] and with the exception of both Target cars[Dixon and Wheldon], Tomas Scheckter in the Symantec 360 D/H(driving for Luzco-Dragon Racing) and her AGR teammate Hideki Mutoh, her car has been fast from the moment her team took it off of the hauler...........

BTW, they finished qualifying about an hour or so ago.......Dixon P1, Patrick P3.

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For the 34th time in series history, teammates will start 1-2 as the Target cars of Scott Dixon and Dan Wheldon start on the front row for Sunday's RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300; however, with the advent of 4-lap qualifying on ovals this year, the rest of the top-10 was a surprise, especially the qualifying effort of Marty Roth, who will start 7th tomorrow, prompting TGR's Wheldon to quip during the post-qualifying press conference that "Chip will be pissed because Roth spends about half as much as we do and he qualified seventh......."



RoadRunner Turbo Indy 300 Starting Grid......................
1st} Scott Dixon, #9 Target..............................................213.956 mph
2nd} Dan Wheldon, #10 Target.........................................213.641 mph

3rd} Danica Patrick, #7 Motorola.......................................213.225 mph
4th} Tomas Scheckter, #12 Symantec 360.........................212.765 mph

5th} A.J. Foyt, IV, #2 Joost/Indy Vision..............................212.478 mph
6th} Ed Carpenter, #20 Menards/DirecTV...........................212.401 mph

7th} Marty Roth, #25 Cirrus Aircraft...................................212.182 mph
8th} Helio Castroneves, #3 Team Penske...........................212.078 mph

9th} Ryan Briscoe, #6 Team Penske...................................211.978 mph
10th} Vitor Meira, #4 National Guard/Delphi........................211.843 mph

11th} Tony Kanaan, #11 Team 7-11...................................211.804 mph
12th} Ryan Hunter-Reay, #17 Ethanol.................................211.681 mph

13th}(R)Hideki Mutoh, #27 Formula Dream.........................211.346 mph
14th} Marco Andretti, #26 Forsythe....................................211.256 mph

15th}(R)Jay Howard, #24 Cirrus Aircraft.............................210.657 mph
16th} Darren Manning, #14 ABC Supply Co........................210.341 mph

17th}(R)Ernesto Viso, #33 PDVSA......................................210.112 mph
18th}(R)Will Power, #8 Aussie Vineyards............................210.092 mph

19th}(R)Jaime Camara, #34 Sangari..................................209.922 mph
20th}(R)Graham Rahal, #06 Hole in the Wall Camps............209.799 mph

21st} Buddy Rice, #15 RollCoater/Racing for Kids................209.766 mph
22nd}(R)Justin Wilson, #02 McDonald's...............................209.405 mph

23rd} Oriol Servia, #5 Plantronics......................................209.239 mph
24th} Milka Duno, #23 CITGO............................................208.516 mph

25th}(R)Enrique Bernoldi, #36 Sangari................................208.442 mph
26th} Bruno Junquiera, #18 Z-Line Designs..........................208.022 mph

27th}(R)Mario Moraes, #19 Sonny's Real Pit BBQ............no posted time

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Post-Qualifying Quotes(top-5 and selected others)...................................


~~Scott Dixon, #9 Target D/H, qualified 1st:

The Team Target cars were very close right off the trailer; we didn't have to do much to them. We changed the balance here and there a little bit. Dan (Wheldon) was maybe a tenth quicker than us this morning. It was hard to tell becuase there were so many cars on track that you couldn't get a clean lap. I think we have to put a lot of it down to the guys on the team. The guys that prepare these cars are very criticial to aerodynamics, especially when you're by yourself. In a pack, it doesn't show much, but a lot of credit to them for being ready for today.

~~Dan Wheldon, #10 Target D/H, qualified 2nd:

It was a good day for Target Chip Ganassi Racing. I probably wasn't as aggressive as I should have been; we have a lot of work to do to be competitive tomorrow.

~~Danica Patrick, #7 Motorola D/H, qualified 3rd:

We arrived here with a good Motorola car. We had a good first run today and the car is really well-balanced. My crew has worked really hard turning the car this weekend; hopefully we can get in front of the red and white cars.

~~Tomas Scheckter, #12 Symantec 360 D/H, qualified 4th:

I'm really happy; these guys have done a great job. We've worked really hard on the setup for a very clean, team car. It has paid off sitting out of a car for a couple of races to now when I'm in a good situation. I'm looking forward to the race and looking forward to Indy as well. The main thing for tomorrow's race is to stay out of trouble and be good in traffic. There are more cars than what I'm used to running around with, so my goal is to stay out of trouble and race the last 15, 20 laps.

~~A.J. Foyt, IV, #2 Joost/Indy Vision D/H, qualified 5th:

I'm really happy. Our car has been really good, and both Vision cars are going to be up front for the start of the race, so we've got to be happy about that. We've definitely got the cars and the team to get a win; we have to have everything come together for us to be able to do that tomorrow.

~~Vitor Meira, #4 National Guard/Delphi D/H, qualified 10th:

I'm just so excited for this race because our car is awesome. We've had a few problems on the 1.5-mile ovals early in the year, but Panther has always been great at Kansas. This is a track I feel really comfortable with, and it helps so much when your car is really great. We're confident; every change we've made has made the National Guard Delphi car faster and we're going to challenge the front of the field tomorrow.

~~Tony Kanaan, #11 Team 7-11 D/H, qualified 11th:

As a team, we didn't do a really good today. We need to try and do a better job; we had issues with the car all day and we didn't get to run many laps today. The car is fine; it's just slow.

~~Will Power, #8 Aussie Vineyards D/H, qualified 18th:

It was a good run; (the car) was flat all the way around, so I didn't have to do much work. The KVRT-Aussie Vineyards team has really improved the car; it is really a lot better than it was at Homestead. Also, I'm starting to understand a little bit more of what I need to do to make the car that little bit quicker. We've closed that gap a bit (but) we have got some more work to do.

~~Jaime Camara, #34 Sangari, qualified 19th:

I'm really happy with my first IndyCar Series qualifying. We made some progress with the car throughout the day and the car was pretty good. I'm happy with the balance on the car and now we're going to focus on the car for the race tomorrow. I'm looking forward to (tomorrow) because it will be special for me (being) my first IndyCar Series race.

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Brief update................

~~Current weather conditions are 48 degrees, overcast w/winds from the north at 9-10 mph(i.e. the winds are blowing into the drivers exiting turns 1 and 2 and pushing them in turns 3-4)
~~Repair work continues on the #19 Sonny's BBQ car as crews from their team and the #18 car continue to work on getting the car ready for this afternoon's race; reports from Dale Coyne Racing are they will be ready but it will be a tight timeline to make it
~~One team that, due to sponsorship woes, will not be making the trip to 16th and Georgetown next month is PDM Racing; however, owner Paul Diatlovich has made it clear that they are still going to be involved w/the IndyCar Series and the Firestone Indy Lights Series as evidenced by their recent agreement with current Indy Lights team American Spirit Racing......reports are that PDM may attempt to field either a 2nd ASR entry or one of their own later on in the year

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Weather update..........skies are clear w/small clouds throughout the sky; temps. are 59 degrees, winds from the west at 11mph