Milwaukee open test: Hornish fastest

[Down F0rce]

WEST ALLIS, Wis. – Persistent rain June 17 forced cancellation of the second of two days of an IRL IndyCar® Series Open Test at The Milwaukee Mile. Twenty-two driver-car combinations recorded 3,021 laps on the asphalt surface without incident on June 16. The IndyCar Series and Menards Infiniti Pro Series™ race for the first time on the historic oval on July 25.

Good to see everyone went well in the first test at Milwaukee. I belive that Panther Racing and Tomas Scheckter were the only ones that had done a test here, when privite testing was still legal last year.

Speeds and total laps in order for first day of Open Test:

Sam Hornish Jr. 164.868 173
Helio Castroneves 164.582 164
Scott Sharp 163.707 217
Scott Dixon 163.332 192
Adrian Fernandez 162.025 158
Buddy Rice 161.895 124
Vitor Meira 161.481 136
Dan Wheldon 160.839 141
Tomas Scheckter 160.827 188
Alex Barron 160.286 143
Darren Manning 160.284 148
Tony Kanaan 159.827 106
Kosuke Matsuura 159.794 183
Greg Ray 159.648 121
Dario Franchitti 158.984 100
Felipe Giaffone 158.042 162
A.J. Foyt IV 157.862 91
Tora Takagi 157.561 151
Mark Taylor 157.411 120
Bryan Herta 157.355 85
Al Unser Jr. 153.330 97
Darren Manning 151.776 21 (10T car)

For the full story, as well as a highlights video, click here.

[BootsOntheSide]

Interesting that Sharp is one the pace, narrowly the fastest Toyota without doing many more laps than Dixon. Most of the expected field was in action, and in an order that would be a feasible grid, although AGR would want better.

[evo]

The Penske cars are both Toyota powered. Top Honda Adrian Fernandez in 5th. Surprising

[Kicking-back]

Only testing, and it's all very tight.

Bodes well for a good race.

[GP Racer]

The speed of the Honda's have no advantage here!

Nice job by Sharp! Maybe he can turn it around now.

[Snrub]

I don't mean to cause contriversy (I'm not saying this as a partisan), but I'm interested to see how the IRL race goes compared to CART's. For a speed comparison, pole time was 181mph and 150mph for Atlantics, I'm not trying to say that speed makes or breaks a race. CART ran a reduced 700hp at Milwaukee and the Atlantics 240hp. I thought the CART race was decent and the Atlantics race not too good.

[BootsOntheSide]

Originally posted by evo
The Penske cars are both Toyota powered. Top Honda Adrian Fernandez in 5th. Surprising

Right you are - brain fog on my part.

Adrian being up tehre isn't surprising in itself - he's proved the "he's too old, should've stayed in CART's retirement home" type naysayers wrong so far.

[Snrub]

He might have proven people wrong, but Fernandez has unfortunately seen his best days pass. If anything I think that the switch to all ovals may keep his career alive longer. It's pretty clear that there are certain differences between the demands on an oval and road course driver and that as one ages, some of the skills that are more important in order to be fast on a road course diminish, while on an oval experience and the non-diminishing skills can hide it for a while.

[Kicking-back]

That does seem to be true, Snrub.

I think Adrian might just do this year, then retire.

[evo]

Don't forget that Adrian passed the mighty PT to win Portland last year, so he's still got it in him.

[Snrub]

Yes he did, but the last couple of years we haven't seen the consistancy in speed we always use to see. One good race all season doesn't make one forget that fellow Mexicans Jourdain and Dominguez looked better than him, let alone many others in the field.

[climb]

I'm happy that, when the ovals get a bit shorter, and the driver starts meaning more, the pure driving talent as well as racing engineering recover their role.
Hopefully for some races we're gonna have some more competition.

[climb]

... I meant, outside Honda world