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Can Dale Coyne Racing stay hot in Birmingham
With a win and a second-place finish in the first two races of the season, Bourdais has a 19-point lead in the driver standings going into the event in Alabama. The Frenchman will be making his seventh appearance at Barber Motorsports Park where he has a best finish of eighth, registered two years ago. "I think being in the Championship lead is a great story more than anything else but it doesn’t change anything in our preparation, said Bourdais. "We’re preparing like any other race, at a track that I very much enjoy driving at and where the gap between the cars will be like at Long Beach, very, very, very close. "Barber is a very demanding track both technically and physically. There are very long corners that are physically demanding. It might not be the most difficult circuit technically but what makes it difficult is trying to find the right setup on the car. "That’s the true test of Barber Motorsports Park. The corners are so long it kind of resembles an oval, where the quality of the car is what makes the difference on the timing sheet. To be able to put in a good time at Barber, your car needs to do what you ask it to.” His teammate, Ed Jones, has great memories at the 2.3-mile, 17-turn road course. The driver of the #19 Boy Scouts of America car started from pole in both Indy Lights races last year and went on to finish first and second on his way to claiming the Indy Lights title. Jones currently sits seventh in the IndyCar Driver Championship standings thanks to his impressive finishes of 10th at St. Petersburg and sixth at Long Beach.
“It’s a perfect start to the season with two top-ten finishes," said Jones "It’s good to have a lot of momentum for the team and myself going forward. Barber will be the first track that we go to that we’ve actually tested at recently, obviously, everyone else has also done that, but it gives us more knowledge going in. I think it’s going to be tough. The circuit is one of the hardest on the calendar both physically and technically.
"I think my Indy Lights experience should help a lot, at least for track knowledge in certain places, like Barber, and just in general. The Indy Lights car is always on the edge, it’s a bit more loose and so it makes it, I find, a bit more challenging in the races to be fast throughout the whole race. "Whereas in IndyCar the cars are more settled. I feel like I have the confidence to push it further towards the limit consistently throughout the race in IndyCar because of the experience I had in the Lights car.” Feedback can be sent to feedback@autoracing1.com Go to our forums to discuss this article |
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