Infineon Race Weekend Thread

[luke]

Race 14 of 17
Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix
Infineon Raceway, Sonoma, California - USA











Friday August 26 - Sunday August 28



www.infineonraceway.com



Weekend schedule: (ET)

Practice 1 Fri. Aug. 26 : 12:30 - 2:30 p.m.

Practice 2 Fri. Aug. 26 : 5 - 6 p.m.

Practice 3 Sat. Aug. 27 : 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.

Qualifications Sat. Aug. 27 : 3:30 - 4:45 p.m.

Final Practice Sat. Aug. 27 : 7 - 7:30 p.m.

Argent Mortgage Indy Grand Prix Sun. Aug. 28 : 3:45 p.m.




Weekend weather forcast:

Friday
85°F (29°C) | 53°F (12°C) Sunny

Saturday
85°F (29°C) | 50°F (10°C) Part Cloud

Sunday
N/A



TV :

U.S. Race Live at 3:30 p.m. (ET) on ESPN

U.K. Race Live at 8:30 p.m. (GMT) on Sky Sports 3

Canada: Race live at 3:30 p.m. (ET) on TSN

Sweden: Race live at 9:30 p.m. (CET) on Viasat Sport 3



Radio IMS



First IRL race: 2005

Total IRL races: N/A

Defending champion: N/A

Race distance: 80 laps/184 miles

[rustyfan]

Good job as always luke

Sunday can't come here soon enough - can't wait to see the cars take on the elevation changes etc at Sears Point

On a side-note, Scott Mansell, son of a certain Nigel Mansell, will take part in the IPS races at both Sears Point and Watkins Glen this year.

[Kicking-back]

Scott Mansell is not related to Nigel Mansell.

[rustyfan]

Originally Posted by Kicking-back

Scott Mansell is not related to Nigel Mansell.

My apologies - the SpeedTV article had me fooled then, which is a bit surprising since they usually don't make those kind of mistakes.

[gttouring]

this should be a good race- i can't hardly wait

[rustyfan]

TV times for Sweden:

Race live on Viasat Sport 3 at 21:30 CET

[Mosport67]

"Scott Mansell, the 19-year-old son of former Formula 1 and CART champion Nigel Mansell, will make his Infiniti Pro Series debut on the two remaining road-course events of the 2005 season."

I was wondering why I didn't know that before. Glad it was Speed that was wrong and not me.

[luke]

Thanks rustyfan.

I am looking forward to it, it will be their first road course race, so I doubt there will be more cautions than at the street race not because it is the second time but because Sears Point is not a street circuit where you tend to see more cautions than on road courses.

[luke]

A man looking forward to that challenge is Target Chip Ganassi Racing driver Ryan Briscoe. The Australian is having a difficult rookie season, highlighted so far precisely by the previous road-course event of the year, at the streets of St. Petersburg. Victory slipped through his fingers in the final few laps, when his Ganassi car made contact with Tony Kanaan while battling for the lead. The rookie eventually finished 14th.

LINK

[drdisque]

not suprising that Buddy Lazier isn't running, he only has a handful of road course starts and those came about 10 years ago.

Hemelgarn not running is probably because Kite has no road course experience and he doesn't have the resources or doesn't want do deal with the hassle of putting someone else in the car.

[jhansen]

I found some interesting Sonoma coverage here:

http://www.tearawayracing.com/

There's a short interview with Patrick Carpentier already up. He sounds happy where he's at and the relationship within the team seems better. He likens the IRL road course package to "an Atlantic car on steriods." Should be a great race weekend.

[Tim Northcutt]

Pantano was fastest in the morning session with a 1:16.937

The top 6 were within a couple of tenths of his time

All three Target cars were in the top six, with Castroneves, Kanaan and Herta as the other three....

IIRC, the order was:

Pantano
Dixon
Helio
Briscoe
Kanaan
Herta

Wheldon was 11th

Enge was the top Chevy in 14th

Bucknum was 17th

Danica was 19th

Carpenter was the slowest in the a.m. session...

[jhansen]

Are they on the Sportscar course Tim?

[Alex K]

PANTANO rulezzz
GEEZUZ, I think he just sign a contract for 2006 with Floyd :wink:.

It is so close, in the Top-Four, or Five, that anybody could be in Pantanos position, but he did great, as I supposed though. He is really great driver.

[luke]

Originally Posted by jhansen

Are they on the Sportscar course Tim?

Motorbike course, (chicane and miss the final turn) I think.

[jhansen]

Yeah, just saw that. Thanks Luke.

http://www.infineonraceway.com/fan%5Fguide/maps/

It's a bit shorter than the ALMS track.

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by jhansen

Are they on the Sportscar course Tim?

From what I can tell about the configuration, they are running the Carousel, and a couple of the esses on the backstretch before they go onto that little stretch in the middle of the backstretch where the motorcycles run that has the hard right-left turn combo to get back onto the regular bakstretch, then they will use the tighter motorcycle course hairpin instead of the looping u-shaped one that the sportscars use....

I am not certain of that, but on the IRL site in the "News Section, Carpentier describes a "lap" there for the IRL cars....

I'm gathering those items based on his description of the place...

[flexible-flyer]

doesnt surprise me pantano has topped the lists. as far as road racers go, giorgio is arguably the best driver in indycars! hopefully he will still be up front later on. as soon as it was anounced i knew giorgio would do well. and briscoe too. he will perform better on this kinda track.

[jhansen]

You can see the difference if you check the link I posted above Tim.

And thanks for looking.

[luke]

No problems.

I think the main reason for them using the AMA course is that there is no run off at the final turn (11).

Maybe it will be good, who knows?

[Tim Northcutt]

Originally Posted by luke

No problems.

I think the main reason for them using the AMA course is that there is no run off at the final turn (11).

Maybe it will be good, who knows?

IIRC, that is exactly why they did it....

[mabs_nsx]

Can someone please tape the race for me????

This is one race that I really want to watch.

[luke]

mabs - what I used to do, is listern to the IMS radio (there's a link in the preview thread directly to it) and also watch the live timming, it's the next best thing if you can't watch it.

[luke]

Briscoe chooses to inverse order for single-lap qualifying.

[Kicking-back]

GRID

1 Ryan Briscoe (1st Career Pole)

13th Career Start

2 Helio Castro Neves (13th time starting 2nd)

61st Career Start

3 Tony Kanaan (7th time starting 3rd)

47th Career start

4 Tomas Enge (1st time starting 4th)

13th Career Start

5 Sam Hornish (5th time starting 5th)

82nd Career Start

6 Buddy Rice (3rd time starting 6th)

47th Career Start

7 Dan Wheldon (4th time starting 7th)

46th Career Start

8 Bryan Herta (4th time starting 8th)

41st Career Start

9 Scott Dixon (2nd time starting 9th)

45th Career Start

10 Alex Barron (2nd time starting 10th)

56th Career Start

11 Vitor Meira (2nd time starting 11th)

43rd Career Start

12 Patrick Carpentier (1st time starting 12th)

14th Career Start

13 Giorgio Pantano (1st time starting 13th)

DEBUT RACE

14 Thomas Scheckter (2nd time starting 14th)

58th Career Start

15 Kosuke Matsuura (4th time starting 15th)

30th Career Start

16 Danica Patrick (1st time starting 16th)

14th Career Start

17 Jeff Bucknum (1st time starting 17th)
Career Best Qualifying
3rd Career Start

18 Roger Yasukawa (7th time starting 18th)

32nd Career Start

19 Scott Sharp (5th time starting 19th)

112th Career Start

20 Ed Carpenter (4th time starting 20th)

32nd Career Start

21 Dario Franchitti (1st time starting 21st)

34th Career Start

Editted by marcus , added Career details