Infineon: Friday Notebook 1

The morning has dawned sunny and cool here in Sonoma, California where the Grand-Am, IndyCar, Indy Lights, and Historic Grand Prix teams have gathered for this weekend's events. The day is expected to be sunny and warm with no rain all three days……..The Historic Grand Prix cars have taken to the track first. They certainly bring back a lot of memories with cars mostly from the late 1970s era. Gilles Villeneuve's Ferrari just pulled in front of us. Who can forget those 4-wheel drifts with the late great Villeneuve at the wheel?………The Penske team has prepared their backup IndyCars in time for this morning's opening practice at 11:00 Pacific Time…….SMI continues to make improvements to this facility and it gets better each time we are here. I look forward to next week where I will spend 3 full days in the Jim Russell Advanced Racing Driving School class testing out their new school cars, the fastest, most advanced school cars in the world. Can I beat the NASCAR Sprint Cup lap times? I have no idea what the lap time comparisons are but it sure will be fun trying……More later…… Mark C. reporting from Sonoma, CA