Detroit: Castroneves, Dixon 1-2 in Friday practice

Helio Castroneves

The two contenders for the IndyCar Series championship aren’t backing down. Helio Castroneves and Scott Dixon topped the opening day of preparations for the Detroit Indy Grand Prix presented by Firestone at The Raceway at Belle Isle Park.

Castroneves, who cut Dixon’s lead from 78 to 43 with a victory Aug. 24 at Infineon Raceway, led the 26 drivers around the 14-turn, 2.07-mile temporary street circuit with a best lap of 1 minute, 13.2059 seconds, 101.795 mph in the No. 3 Team Penske entry.

Dixon, who finished 12th at Infineon, was .4937 of a second slower (1:13.6996, 101.113 mph) in the No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing entry.

Vitor Meira was third, Ryan Briscoe fourth and Danica Patrick fifth. Reigning race winner Tony Kanaan was sixth.

Castroneves, who won the pole at Infineon and is the reigning pole sitter at Belle Isle, will attempt to win the PEAK Motor Oil Pole Award on Aug. 30.

RESULTS

1. (3) Helio Castroneves, Dallara-Honda, 101.795
2. (9) Scott Dixon, Dallara-Honda, 101.113
3. (4) Vitor Meira, Dallara-Honda, 100.728
4. (6) Ryan Briscoe, Dallara-Honda, 100.516
5. (7) Danica Patrick, Dallara-Honda, 100.100
6. (11) Tony Kanaan, Dallara-Honda, 99.824
7. (17) Ryan Hunter-Reay, Dallara-Honda, 99.819
8. (14) Darren Manning, Dallara-Honda, 99.743
9. (5) Oriol Servia, Dallara-Honda, 99.739
10. (18) Bruno Junqueira, Dallara-Honda, 99.716
11. (8) Will Power, Dallara-Honda, 99.573
12. (12) Tomas Scheckter, Dallara-Honda, 99.498
13. (02) Justin Wilson, Dallara-Honda, 99.479
14. (06) Graham Rahal, Dallara-Honda, 99.412
15. (33) E.J. Viso, Dallara-Honda, 99.263
16. (10) Dan Wheldon, Dallara-Honda, 99.011
17. (27) Hideki Mutoh, Dallara-Honda, 98.623
18. (26) Marco Andretti, Dallara-Honda, 98.610
19. (20) Ed Carpenter, Dallara-Honda, 97.768
20. (19) Mario Moraes, Dallara-Honda, 97.514
21. (15) Buddy Rice, Dallara-Honda, 97.229
22. (2) A.J. Foyt IV, Dallara-Honda, 97.130
23. (34) Jaime Camara, Dallara-Honda, 96.431
24. (36) Enrique Bernoldi, Dallara-Honda, 95.422
25. (23) Milka Duno, Dallara-Honda, 92.415
26. (25) Marty Roth, Dallara-Honda, 87.664

QUOTES:

HELIO CASTRONEVES (No. 3 Team Penske, fastest): Today was a good day for us. I really enjoy (this track). It is a very technical track, combining bumps and quick corners. It is always very good. We are headed in a good direction, but we are going to have to keep working."

SCOTT DIXON (No. 9 Target Chip Ganassi Racing, second): “This morning was pretty good. I had a problem with hitting the wall twice and bent the tow link. We actually had to repair the car in the middle of the session and had to end early because we had to fix it. The car was actually quick out of the box. I think we were quickest in the first 10 minutes, but we had a lot of understeer. We tried dialing it out and made the car a lot worse. We put a set of stickers (new tires) on the car and it was pretty average. I think the car can be a little bit quicker, and using the baseline setup from this morning, it should have been quicker. Helio is quite fast, but I don't know if the track changed because of the weather. A lot of people seemed to have a lot of understeer during the session."

RYAN BRISCOE (No. 6 Team Penske, fourth): “It's been a little busy today, with me doing double-duty (Briscoe is running both the IndyCar Series and ALMS events at Belle Isle) this weekend. Today was the first day I've been around this track in an IndyCar and I think practice went really well. Team Penske made some good progress and I learned a lot today, so now I think we just have to go back and figure out what we need to do to be a little quicker tomorrow."

DANICA PATRICK (No. 7 Motorola, fifth): “The car felt really good today during both practice sessions. The key to all road courses is track position, so hopefully we can get the Motorola car into the Firestone Fast Six tomorrow and have a good finish. I feel really good about this weekend."

TONY KANAAN (No. 11 Team 7-Eleven, sixth): “The Team 7-Eleven car was pretty strong today. We are still chasing some guys, but I am pretty happy. Overall, I think we should have a good day tomorrow."

RYAN HUNTER-REAY (No. 17 Rahal Letterman Racing Team Ethanol, seventh): “We rolled out with a good race car today. We were in the top four for 90 percent of the session. We made some changes at the end of the run that didn’t help us as much as we would have liked. I really think the traffic kept us from showing what we could really do today, but we still have work to do before qualifying."

DARREN MANNING (No. 14 ABC Supply Co./AJ Foyt Racing, eighth): “After the hard weekend at Sonoma, it's good to come back to a track where we have some good memories and more importantly, good information from last year. We rolled off strong, so now we can just fine-tune the car to make it better, which we've been able to do. There's still more speed in the car, so that's good."

ORIOL SERVIA (No. 5 KV Racing Technology, ninth): “KV Racing Technology made some changes for the second session that I liked a lot more; the car was a lot more reactive. We only needed a few laps and we looked decent, so hopefully tomorrow we continue with the improvement."