Saturday Morning Update from Portland

Two time Portland winner

It is a chilly morning at Portland International Raceway with temperatures in the low 50s right now. It is expected to warm up to 74 degrees today about the time of IndyCar qualifying at 3:20 pm Pacific time. The final practice session will be at 10:45 am this morning. There is no Sunday morning warmup due to the procedure change, so this is the last chance to test some changes before qualifying and race day.

Portland hosted IndyCar races from 1984 to 2007. Michael Andretti and Al Unser, Jr each had three wins here. In 1986, Michael, present owner of Andretti Autosport team, and his legendary Father, Mario, were racing for the win when Michael lost fuel pressure on the final turn of the final lap, which allowed Mario to beat him to the finish line by 0.070 seconds, giving his father the best Father's Day present. At that time, it was the closest finish of any race in Indy Car history.

Sebastien Bourdais, the Frenchman who has won four IndyCar Championships, has also had some success here in Portland. Driving for the former Newman/Haas Racing, Bourdais won here in 2004 and the final race here in 2007. The race in 2007 was dictated by fuel saving strategy.

Bourdais has this to say about his recollection of that race. "I mean, remember in '07, I think the reason why I saved fuel was to try and go longer on the first stint because we were buried in traffic, and the out lap is always a bit costly here, so if you can do an extra lap — at least in Champ Car it was always a bit different because we had really big fuel cells, so the out lap and on cold tires was extremely difficult. We were carrying 32 gallons of fuel, now we only have 18, so that's not as big a deal as it used to be. So I don't think the fuel situation was really a fuel situation as much as trying to replace yourself and kind of open the window and offset yourself."

"Yeah, I mean, that worked for us on that day, and obviously we had a lot of pace, and we'll see how this one goes. But I think — yeah, I think it's very difficult to predict exactly what's going to happen. I just don't see it being a fuel race right now. It's like the windows are really big. I don't think you can do it on less pit stops than you think. It's just — there's always like going the far end of the window and then you're going to take the chance to be hung out for about 15 laps every stint or you play the more cautious part and see how it goes."

Ferrucci finds speed quickly

A surprise on the timing charts yesterday was one of Bourdais teammates, Santino Ferruccci. Ferrucci, current F1 test driver for Haas F1 team, the 20 year old posted the third quickest time in the afternoon practice session and fifth fastest in the combined results from the two practice sessions from Friday.

Asked about his practice runs, Ferrucci commented, "The DCR team has done a great job of preparing the number 39 Cly-Del car. I am very happy with how today went. We were really quick on the Firestone red (alternative) tires, but there is still some work to do with the black tires. Learning the track ahs been a bit of a challenge, but it's been nice to have Sebastien (Bourdais) coach me with which lines to take. It is really a quick track."

Lucille Dust reporting