Marco Andretti tops Indy Car practice in Mid-Ohio

Marco Andretti watches practice before setting fast time

Shawn Payne

Andretti Green Racing's Marco Andretti turned the fastest lap in practice Friday afternoon for Sunday's Honda Indy 200 at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. His teammate, Tony Kanaan, was right behind in 2nd ahead of Team Penske's Helio Castroneves. Ryan Briscoe was 4th ahead of Scott Dixon and Justin Wilson.

The only major incident in the session was a crash by AJ Foyt IV who did a fair amount of damage to his Dallara chassis.

Quotes

MARCO ANDRETTI (No. 26 Blockbuster, fastest): “Practice wasn’t bad because we were the fastest of the day, but there is still some stuff that we need to work on. We still have a lot of understeer in the car. It just seems easy to tip the car into oversteer, so we need some grip. We need to find grip on this track because of the way that they sealed it. The more grip the better. I think if we can get some mechanical grip then the lap times will be better."

TONY KANAAN (No. 11 Team 7-Eleven, second): “It was decent. I believe we do have a pretty good car. Qualifying position here is going to be really, really important. I’m happy – so far, so good. With the heat and all the different rubbers with the different series, the track is changing constantly, so we’re going to have to be smart about what kind of changes we want to make, because you can really make a mistake and go off with your car."

HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Team Penske, third): “The Team Penske car was really good today. With the experience we gained here last year as well as the historical data that the team has at this track, we were optimistic that we would have a fast car right off the truck. We mainly concentrated on race setup today and concentrated on testing some little things that we thought might make us quicker. We would have liked to top the speed charts today, but the final session was shortened by a caution, and when we got back out, we only had a few laps to try to go for a quick lap. Unfortunately, I got caught up in some traffic, but we’ll take third quick as a good start to the weekend and try to move forward from here."

RYAN BRISCOE (No. 6 Team Penske, fourth): “Today was the first time I'd ever been around this track in an IndyCar Series car, and I have to say I really enjoy the circuit. Our goal for the practice sessions was to test as much as possible and try a variety of things. Overall, I think it was a good day for Team Penske, and we learned quite a bit. We worked mainly on our race setup today, and we'll focus on our qualifying setup tomorrow morning. Hopefully things will go as we hope, and we'll be able to get into the Firestone Fast Six."

SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, fifth): “We had a decent car today. We saved tires; we only used two sets of our four. We are ready for tomorrow and plan to have a good day."

JUSTIN WILSON (No. 02 McDonald’s Racing Team, sixth): “I really enjoy the track; it’s pretty cool. We made some progress in the first session, and I was quite happy that the McDonald’s car finished fourth in that. We made a few changes between sessions, and it didn’t go too well, so the second session we recovered and were pretty pleased with the end performance considering we were on old tires the whole time. I figure we are in good shape. The pit boxes are really, really short, and I tried different lines coming into the boxes, and one time I came in I clipped Tim’s (Coffeen) knee with the front wing and knocked him over. It’s not a nice thing to have happen to him. I felt really bad and am glad he is OK and was back on his feet and working on the car by the end of the session."

HIDEKI MUTOH (No. 27 Formula Dream, seventh): “The morning session was good for the Formula Dream team. We had a good car in the afternoon session but had a bit of a problem with the gears, so we didn’t get as much time out there as we wanted."

DANICA PATRICK (No. 7 Motorola, 10th): “The Motorola car was a little too nervous for my style of driving today. But we are working through the issues. Hopefully we will be able to find a better setup before qualifying tomorrow. My crew is working hard to get it where it needs to be."

—

Practice Friday for the Honda Indy 200 at Mid-Ohio IndyCar Series event on the 2.258-mile Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, with position, car number in parentheses, driver, chassis-engine and speed:

Combined Results