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Patrick
Carpentier |
Sebring, Florida, March 22, 2002 - Team Player's two-day
testing session on the 1.72-mile Sebring road course concluded
Friday with encouraging results on two fronts - driver Patrick
Carpentier clocked the fastest lap time on this second day and
the team's Ford-Reynard Champ car package performed
exceptionally well.
"It was the best test we've done this year," remarked Team
Player's technical director Bruce Ashmore. "It was especially
good because when you're coming off a race, you have clear
questions and you know what issues you want to focus on. Over
the last two days, we've run set-ups for the street course in
Long Beach, where we'll be racing in couple of weeks. This
session has really helped a great deal to prepare us for that
race."
Drivers from five other CART series teams shared the track
with Carpentier on Friday, as the Team Player's driver logged
almost 90 laps, about the same number of laps he had done on
Thursday, when his fastest lap was 51.7 seconds on a track
that still had lots of grip after last weekend's running of
the 12 hours of Sebring. In registering the quickest lap on
Friday, Carpentier toured the road circuit in 51.1 seconds.
The main focus of the two-day session was further developing
the traction control system, a device that teams are allowed
to use during the 2002 CART season. Reynard also delivered a
new undertray and a new and improved front wing for the
sessions, along with a fresh set of aerodynamic components, to
set the race car up for Long Beach.
"We were not only looking at Long Beach, but Montreal and
Mexico City as well, because the Sebring course we tested on
is quite similar to these tracks," said Carpentier. "We tested
extensively at Sebring in the off-season but this was the
first time we did it using a street-course set-up on a car
that included street-course tires."
"I'm totally pleased with the way the two days went," added
Carpentier, who had a seventh-place finish at the
season-opener in Monterrey, Mexico earlier this month. "I got
a lot of answers to questions I had coming out of Monterrey -
things like teamwork and how the car works, for example.
Having a testing session like this between your first and
second race is good because you can clear up any questions you
have before the next race weekend."
Carpentier's teammate Alex Tagliani, fresh off a fifth-place
finish in Monterrey, will be back on the track for a testing
session next week in Homestead, Florida. It will be Team
Player's first oval-track testing, and the session is expected
to include at least 15 other CART series drivers.
Players
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Ricardo
González
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