2006 IRL Rd. 2-Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

[mlittle]

In and amidst all the tragedy of what occurred at Homestead-Miami Speedway this past Sunday, Speed Channel's Robin Miller put it all in perspective.......

We race, and then we mourn.

With that, the IRL IndyCar Series moves to the next stop on the 2006 calendar, the Honda Grand Prix of St. Pete. The race, set on a temporary airport/street course, will challenge the drivers with a combination of grip-heavy airplane runways and typical, "slick" streets, and this is the second year that the series has traveled to the Florida Gulf Coast and to St. Petersburg, Fla., just across Tampa Bay from the larger city of Tampa. Here's a trip around the 1.8+ mile circuit.......

Exiting turn 13, the drivers will roar down the wide frontstraight at around 155 mph before slowing to 100-105 mph for the turn 1-2 complex, a quick left-right area that looks deceptively slow. Exiting 2, the drivers will slingshot down to turn 4, going from 150-160+ down to 90 mph for the 90-deg. right-turn. Once there, they'll pass the technical section, several turns(5, 6, 7, 8 ) that place a premium on both aero and mech. grip. Once past eight, it's back on the throttle for the trip down the backstraight, where the cars will reach speeds of 170+ mph; through a quick dogleg(turn 9) before slwoing for turn 10(this is where Ryan Briscoe tried to bull past Tony Kanaan late in the 2005 race.....instead, it was Briscoe who met the business end of the turn 10 tirewalls....). Once past 10, it's down to a quick right-left chicane before heading down to the turn 13 hairpin. Once around, it's back down to the start-finish, and that is one lap around St. Pete.

Speaking of the 2005 race......it was a 1-2-3-4 Andretti-Green sweep, as Dan Wheldon led teammates Tony Kanaan, Dario Franchitti and Bryan Herta to the stripe. The surprise last year was Rahal-Letterman's Buddy Rice, who fought an ill-handling car to finish 5th. Nowhere to be see where any of either Chip Ganassi or Roger Penske's cars.....I don't see that happening again this year, especially after seeing Castroneves and Wheldon race to the line at Homestead. But that was an oval....this will be an all-out street fight.

Here is the current schedule of events for the weekend.....(all times US EST except for Sunday, which comes under EDT)

Practice Session #1-Friday, March 31, 10:30 am
Practice Session #2-Friday, March 31, 2:00 pm
Practice Session #3-Saturday, April 1, 9:15 am
Qualifying Session-Saturday, April 1, 1:45 pm(Firestone Shootout for top 6 qualifiers to occur after qualifying)
Final Practice Session-Sunday April 2, 10:15 am
Honda Grand Prix of St. Pete-Sunday, April 2, 3:30

The green flag for the race will fall around 3:45 pm US EDT(19:45 UTC) and set for broadcast on ESPN with radio simulcasts on the IMS Radio Network(also includes webcast through the series website, indycar.com), XM Satellite Radio and the U.S. Armed Forces Network.

[Snowy]

I voted for Dario but I think Dan is on a mission

[mlittle]

I voted for Dario but I think Dan is on a mission

I think so, too, Snowy......I think Wheldon wants to prove that moving from Andretti-Green to Target/Ganassi was not a mistake; he proved that in winning the season opener in Homestead........but if he wins the series title...that'll be the exclamation mark on the season for him.

[mlittle]

Vision Racing officials confirmed that veteran road-racer Roberto Moreno will drive the #20 Vision Racing car normally piloted by Ed Carpenter at St. Pete this weekend. During the course of the announcement, both Moreno and team co-owner Tony George confirmed that they are actively pursuing a shot for Moreno to race at Indy in the 500, but that those plans are still up in the air.

[mlittle]

With clear skies and business at hand, the IndyCar Series began its' weekend on the streets of St. Pete, and if the combined practice times are an indication, it's liekly that the 2005 polesitter, Bryan Herta, should begin saying "au revoir" to his poletime from 2005. Although no one bested it, his teammate, Dario Franchitti, came the closest. Here are the top-6 after today's two practice sessions.......

1}Dario Franchitti(#27 Jim Beam/Klein Tools D/H)......1:02.797 sec./103.190 mph
2}Scott Dixon(#9 Target P/H)...................................1:02.952 sec./102.936 mph
3}Tony Kanaan(#11 Team 7-11 D/H)........................1:03.145 sec./102.620 mph
4}Helio Castroneves(#3 Marlboro-Team Penske D/H)...1:03.157 sec./102.602 mph
5}Buddy Rice(#15 Argent/Pioneer P/H)......................1:03.309 sec./102.355 mph
6}Kosuke Matsurra(#55 Panasonic/ARTA D/H)............1:03.470 sec./102.096 mph


Here's some other items of note from the notebook.....

1}Possible replacement driver in the works for the #17....Multiple sources(autoracing1.com, paddocktalk.com, espn.com) are reporting that, on Tuesday, April 4th, Rahal-Letterman Racing is set to announce at Indianapolis Motor Speedway that current Indy Pro Series driver Jeff Simmons will drive the #17 Ethanol P/H beginning with the season's third race, at the Motegi Twin Ring in Japan. According to RLR's acting VP of Operations, Ray Leto, when asked about this,

Plans for the Ethanol car are undecided at this time. Bobby is out of the country this week, but has been conferring with the sponsor and making progress on a replacement drive. We expect to finalize matters when Bobby returns early next week.

Note......Leto, who is the engineer for the #16 team, has been serving as acting VP of Operations while Scott Roembke, the team's regular VP-Ops, is recovering from health problems at the moment.

2}"The drivers I can trust and the drivers I can't trust"......for IRL rookie Marco Andretti, he got a lesson in that axiom today during the second practice session. Early on in session #2, he tried to dive down past 2005 ROY Danica Patrick going through turn 10 and barely avoided sending both of them into the turn 10 tirewall. Thirty minutes later......he tries the same thing with Eddie Cheever.....and Cheever sends the kid into the tirewalls........thankfully, Marco was uninjured, but he got the last laugh, as series officials took Cheever's fastest lap of the session, relegating the 1998 Indy 500 winner from 7th down to 15th....

3}Why all the yellows....? For Buddy Rice, who set the fifth fastest lap of today's 2 sessions, this is a good question. As he put it....."Right when you everything together for a flying lap, and boom, the yellow light comes out." At least Rice can take some solace in this....there are 4 Panoz' cars on-track this week....the #15(Rice), the #16(Patrick), and the two TGR cars, the #9(Dixon) and #10(Wheldon). Instead of being 3 against 17, it's only 4 vs. 16. The Charge of the Panoz Brigade continues........

[mlittle]

For the second cons. year, it will be an Andretti-Green Racing driver who will lead the field to the green for Sunday's Honda Grand Prix of St. Pete.,....this time, however, it'll be Dario Franchitti(#27 Jim Beam/Klein Tools Dallara/Honda) pacing the field, as the Scotsman broke the existing record in single-lap qual., then backed it up in the 10-minute Firestone Shootout. When the shootout began, the order from single-lap qual. was Franchitti, Kanaan, Hornish, Jr., Dixon, Castroneves, and Herta; by the time the checkered flag fell to end the session, Franchitti was still on top, but Target/Ganassi's Scott Dixon(#9 Target Panoz/Honda) had jumped from 4th to 2nd, dropping both Kanaan and Hornish, Jr. down one spot. The first three rows, thus, will look as follows.....

Row 1:#27 Dario Franchitti, 1:02.275 sec./104.504 mph(*)
#9 Scott Dixon, 1:02.595 sec./103.522 mph
Row 2:#11 Tony Kanaan, 1:02.613 sec./103.493 mph
#6 Sam Hornish, Jr., 1:02.676 sec./103.389 mph
Row 3:#3 Helio Castroneves, 1:02.748 sec./103.270 mph
#7 Bryan Herta, 1:02.877 sec./103.058 mph
(*)-new track qualifying record

Other items of note in the Saturday Notebook......

1}Mark your calenders.........while talk of a merger btwn. the Indy Racing League and the rival Champ Car World Series continue, it's always important to have a backup plan, which includes scheduling events for the 2007 season. Series officials announced Saturday that the 2007 edition of the Honda GP-St. Pete will be scheduled for April 1, 2007. This marks the first event to be set for the 2007 season(technically, it's no. 2; the 91st Indianapolis 500 gets the first chance to be on the calendar.....they're scheduled to run Memorial Day Sunday 2007).

2}Adding insult to injury......While scanning the Daily Trackside Report that the IRL generates for each day of on-track activity, there was this bit of info concerning last week's race......

The four entrants that qualified but did not start last weekend's event at Homestead-Miami Speedway will only earn half of the points as per the IndyCar Series rule book. As a result, Rahal-Letterman Racing's No. 16 entry earned seven points, while Rahal-Letterman Racing's No. 15 and No. 17 entries and Vision Racing's No. 20 earned only six points. The drivers of the entries also earned half points.

Normally, I'd say something, but for IRL officials to do this is just plain wrong....

3}Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new rolling chicane......last year, it was A.J. Foyt, IV(who's now terrorizing NASCAR's Busch Series..... ); this year, it's rookie P.J. Chesson, who set the slowest time in qual. w/a time of 1:08.827 sec.(almost 6 sec. slower than polesitter Franchitti). By comparison, the top-3 qualifiers for the Indy Pro Series first race of their two-race weekend at St. Pete(Matos, Festa and Howard) set times faster than Chesson, and they're driving 420-hp Dallara/Infiniti cars, as opposed to Chesson's Dallara/Honda, which has 650hp.

Driver quotes from the top-3 in qualifying.......

Dario Franchitti(#27 Jim Beam/Klein Tools Dallara/Honda):

Finishing 1-2-3-4 last year was awazing. It was something people though we couldn't do, and we weren't so sure we could do it. Things just fell our way as a team last year. I was disappointed not to win it because of the problems in the pit last year. We left Homestead on a high note last. We really did, and (it) set us up for the rest of the season.

Scott Dixon(#9 Target Panoz/Honda):

We made some drastic changes to the car after the single-lap qualifying, and the car improved tremendously. I think our car right-now is in a great race set-up, and I think we'll be up front tomorrow. I really like this race track, and we've been fast all weekend. They had some problems with Dan's can today, and I'm surpirsed that he's not a little higher. I thought Helio might jump up there with us, because he's always strong on road courses. Dario will be fast tomorrow, as he's been all weekend.

Tony Kanaan(#11 Team 7-11 Dallara/Honda):

This type of qualifying format is fun and I think Dixon got us right at the end. It's going to be a long race but the Team 7-11 car is very good this weekend. I'm very happy for Dario and the entire AGR team; it's our second straight pole at this race track. We had our moment last year which will last for the rest of our lives at this track last year and hopefully it will bring us more luck tomorrow. The crowd is great, they love what they're watching and it's just the perfect environment.

As for the race.....the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg is set for 3:30 PM US EDT(19:30 UTC 2 April 2006) on ESPN with radio simulcast on the IMS Radio Network.

[mlittle]

How long has it been since Marlboro-Team Penske's Helio Castroneves has won an Indy-style non-oval race? Well, it was Aug. 12, 2001, when Castroneves, then-partnered w/Gil de Ferran, won at Mid-Ohio. That drought is over, as Castroneves(#3 Marlboro-Team Penske Dallara/Honda) outlasted the competition to capture his first IRL street race victory this past afternoon.

As the race began(IMHO it was one of the worst rolling starts ever) the front-runners, led by polesitter Dario Franchitti(#27 Jim Beam/Klein Tools Dallara/Honda) got a very large jump at the start, but it would be a short day for the Scotsman as a wheel bearing seized the right-front wheel on his car; his day was over after 14 laps and Franchitti finsihed last in 19th. The lead cycled around to Traget/Ganassi's Scott Dixon(#9 Target Panoz/Honda) who would lead from lap 15 to lap 45. However, he had to contend w/a broken right-front wing endplate, which cost him valuable front-wing downforce, and by 45 Castroneves re-took the lead, holding it until lap 54, when he pitted for fuel and tires. The lead then went to Rahal-Letterman's Buddy Rice(#15 Argent/Pioneer Panoz/Honda) who led for nine laps until he had to pit for fuel and tires, handing the lead back to Castroneves. For most of the last 37 laps, it became a two-car showcar btwn. Castroneves and Dixon, who despite running their cars on lean fuel mixtures were, at one point, over 15 secs. ahead of third-place competitor Tony Kanaan(#11 Team 7-11 Dallara/Honda). It then became a matter of who would blink and pit; first, Kanaan, who made a "splash-n'-dash" for fuel only. Then Castroneves, who pitted for fuel, handing the lead back to Dixon for a few laps before Dixon, who was on fumes by lap 95, pitted for a timed fuel stop. It wasn't fast enough, though....as Dixon exited pitlane, Castroneves just made it past him and that, as they say, was all she wrote. With three laps to go, while fighting for 5th place, the cars of Rice and Tomas Scheckter(#2 Vision Dallara/Honda) crashed entering turn 6. Rice limped back to pitlane, while Scheckter couldn't believe his bad luck. The race would end under caution, giving Castroneves his 8th IndyCar Series win but his first on a non-oval since his days back in CART at Mid-Ohio. Here's how the top-10 finished......

1}#3 Helio Castroneves, D/H
2}#9 Scott Dixon, P/H
3}#11 Tony Kanaan, D/H
4}#7 Bryan Herta, D/H
5}#4 Vitor Meira, D/H
6}#16 Danica Patrick, P/H
7}#55 Kosuke Matsurra, D/H, -1 lap
8}#6 Sam Hornish, Jr., D/H, -1 lap
9}#14 Felipe Giaffone, D/H, -1 lap
10}#8 Scott Sharp, D/H, -1 lap\

Observations to follow in a short while.........

[mlittle]

Here are some oberservations from St. Pete. on not just the race, but the weekend as a whole.............

1}Congrats, Raphael!! While most of the attention centered around the IndyCar Series, the IRL's feeder series, the Indy Pro Series, ran a 2-race weekend on the streets of St. Pete. and rising 2006 Atlantic Championship (and 2005 Star Mazda Series champion) Raphael Matos came to St. Pete and he swept both races, easily winning agst. the best of the IPS. The only IPS drivers who gave him any competition........Englishman Jay Howard, who won the U.S. FF2000 series last year, and veteran IPS/ICS driver Jeff Simmons, who, if the news reports are to be believed, is set to replace the late Paul Dana over at Rahal-Letterman Racing in the #17. As for Matos.....he now returns to the Atlantics to begin the 2006 season in Long Beach next week.

2}Bad vision, Tomas........Late in today's race, Tomas Scheckter and Buddy Rice touched wheels and Scheckter, understandably, was none too pleased at Rice. After stewing for a bit along the tirewheels, he sees what he believed was Rice's Argent/Pioneer car pass him on the next lap, and he angrily shakes his fist at the car. Problem was.......it was the wrong Argent/Pioneer car; Rice had limped back to the pits, with suspension damage. In Scheckter's defense, though......Rice did try to stick his nose in where it didn't belong, and Scheckter got the worse end of it.

3}Where have I seen this before? In the mid-1990's it was a common sight to see Chip Ganassi and Roger Penske's cars fighting for wins in CART, and apparently, now that the IRL is a spec-engine series, they're back........After 2 rounds, it's the Captain 1, the Chipster 1........and right now, everyone else is just along for the ride.

The IRL IndyCar Series will take a few weeks off before heading to the land of the rising sun, Japan, for round 3, the Bridgestone Indy Japan 300 at the Twin Ring Motegi circuit in Motegi, Japan.

[Southernman]

It's good to see Scott Dixon perform well. It looks like he could be competitive this year.

[Snowy]

it would be a short day for the Scotsman as a wheel bearing seized the right-front wheel on his car; his day was over after 14 laps and Franchitti finsihed last in 19th.

I don't believe it

[mlittle]

It does appear that the Kiwi is back at the top of the ladder........now that the Chipster(his team owner) has a decent engine in the car now.

As far as Franchitti......that was the second wheel bearing on his car to seize up; they had to swap out wheel bearings in the final warmup before the race....I can only imagine what the post-race debriefing was like.

[Snowy]

As far as Franchitti......that was the second wheel bearing on his car to seize up; they had to swap out wheel bearings in the final warmup before the race....I can only imagine what the post-race debriefing was like.

If I know Dario he missed it He'd be down the pub and as merry as an 'a*$"ole dwelling butt monkey'

[mlittle]

As far as Franchitti......that was the second wheel bearing on his car to seize up; they had to swap out wheel bearings in the final warmup before the race....I can only imagine what the post-race debriefing was like.

If I know Dario he missed it He'd be down the pub and as merry as an 'a*$"ole dwelling butt monkey'

I suspect, snowy, that's what Dario was saying to the team's mechanics after the race.......