Overheard at Barber Friday

Alexander Rossi spins early in practice 1

Barber Motorsports Park is a fan favorite and IndyCar drivers really love this place. Scott Dixon said, "it's a fantastic, world-class facility, and we all love coming here, even from the first test we did here, and there were thousands of people that turned up to watch an open-day test. Excited to be back here. It's been a good track for us.

"I think we've finished on the podium every year except for once, and hopefully we can continue that tradition. The only unfortunate side to that is that I've never won here. To try and make it to the top step is the goal for this weekend, but we'll have to see how that plays, but always excited to be back here."

Urrita moving up?

Word in the paddock is that Indy Lights driver Santi Urrita wants to win Indy Lights championship, after finishing 2nd last two years, and use that as a launch pad up to IndyCar next year. We hear that there is a small chance he could run a 2nd car with Harding Racing at this years Indy 500.

Spins, Spins and More Spins

Drivers were scratching their heads after a number of spins Friday, mostly at Turn 5 that gave them fits all day. They included – Rossi, Newgarden, Bourdais, Chaves, Leist, Veach, Pagenaud, Hunter-Reay, Binder (hit tire wall in Turn 16), Hinchcliffe, and Kanaan. A tail win going into the downhill Turn 5 had the cars dancing all over and drivers fighting the wheel. Under braking the rear of the car was getting loose and the rear of the cars were coming around. Remember the center of gravity of this year's car is farther forward and this means less weight on the rear wheels.

We heard reports that the Firestone tires were going off faster because they are skating over the asphalt much more this year due to the lower downforce.

Will the weatherman be wrong again?

It rained in practice last year too.

Unfortunately the weather forecast still calling for 100% chance of rain Sunday afternoon. Making matters worse it might be heavy rain and mixed with lightening and thunder.

The rain will be the same for all the drivers, but terrible for the race fans. The drivers won't have any practice in the wet except in the morning warm-up. It means the drivers can use all their dry tires, including their limited sets of reds, in the first two days and save their wets for the race.

"I think Firestone brought a great wet tire here. If we do have the opportunity to race here in the wet, I think it would be a very exciting one, a very good one to watch," said Dixon.

"Being a Weatherman is probably the only job that you can have be wrong every day and still keep it," said Dixon.

"We'll see where that takes us. I've seen forecasts like that. I think if we look at the Indianapolis 500 last year, it was the same forecast, and we got in the race with no problem, and it was a beautiful day. We'll see. We can't change anything, so we'll continue on with our normal progress throughout the weekend, try and be fast in every session, use the tires as we're going to need them in the race, and see what Sunday brings."

Man to beat

Will Power may be the man to beat. During practice when drivers started to switch to the reds Power, who was comfortably fastest in session 1, was right there on black tires and could be the sleeper in qualifying Saturday.

Mark C. reporting from Barber