Friday morning update from St. Pete GP

Hunter-Reay ready to attack revised St. Pete track

This weekend the Verizon IndyCar Series will run their season opener in St. Petersburg, Florida. With the temperatures in the high 70s, the weekend should be perfect to get the series started on round one of the 17 races scheduled for this season.

With all the driver changes for this season, it will be interesting to watch how the team chemistry effects the chance for a win for some of these drivers. Takuma Sato is now driving for Andretti Autosport after driving for Foyt Racing for four seasons. Having only one win, Sato looks to change that statistic with three experienced drivers as teammates.

Carlos Munoz, having left Andretti Autosport after only one win in four seasons, switched places with Sato and hopes to bring Foyt Racing a few first place finishes. His new teammate, Conor Daly, driving the number 4 for Foyt racing, will be running his second full time season.

Joseph Newgarden, driving the number 2 car, will start this season with his new teammates at Team Penske. Newgarden, who has three wins over the past two seasons, is looking to increase that number of wins immensely and maybe add a championship. Tim Cindric, President of Penske Racing, has moved over to be the strategist for the talented Newgarden.

Four time IndyCar champion, Sebastien Bourdais, has moved to Dale Coyne Racing. He brought his long time engineer, Craig Hampson, back to DCR. Additionally, Bourdais will continue working with Olivier Boisson who was his Race Engineer the last few seasons at KVSH Racing and with who he claimed four wins with. The team has also added the Indylights 2016 Champion Ed Jones.

Ganassi Racing has switched back to the Honda engine this season. The Honda has been gaining ground on the Chevrolet engine over the past two seasons. Scott Dixon, driving the number 9 entry for Ganassi, has a new sponsor for this race, General Electric LED Lighting. Dixon is the leading driver in the current IndyCar Series with 39 wins and has been driving for Ganassi Racing since 2003.

Ed Carpenter Racing has JR Hildebrand in their number 21 entry and Spencer Pigot will be driving the road courses this season in the number 20 entry. Carpenter will continue his tradition of driving the oval races. His new lineup will provide more young American drivers in the series.

Another change this season is one additional set of Firestone alternate tires (red) for the road courses. Scott Dixon had commented last season at Watkins Glen that having an extra set of reds for Friday practice would be a good idea since the compounds change at every track and the drivers are not sure what the reds will do until the qualifying sessions. The extra set has to be returned after all the Friday sessions are completed.

The series has changed the brake manufacturer to PFC, but retained the Brembo Brake Disks for one more year and this mismatch has caused overheating issues. Will Power commented this morning that the braking will be very different with the new brakes. This will be another factor to watch this weekend and may even out the Chevy/Honda rivalry.

The first IndyCar practice was scheduled for 11:15 am today, but is being held for track repairs. The second practice session is scheduled for 3:00 pm today.

Lucille Dust Reporting live from St. Pete