Indy Second Practice Report

The Honda teams continue to be out to lunch on the road courses

In another display of Chevy power — or at least the superiority of the Chevy teams — Scott Dixon set the pace for the second round of practice for Saturday's Grand Prix of Indianapolis. Will Power was over 1/10 of a second behind as second-fastest.

Once again, 8 of the top 10 spots were Chevy powered, with Graham Rahal (7th) and Takuma Sato (8th) leading the Honda charge. Ten of the bottom 13 cars on the speed chart were Honda powered.

Rahal admitted that every Chevy car was faster in the trap speeds (over the Honda cars), and that the Hondas were difficult to drive. Describing a search for "drivability" he listen in envy as Will Power talked about the Chevy aero kit that was allowing drivers a very fine level of tune to suit driving styles. "You find you're sideways more than you're pointed straight."

Of course all of that talk about speed goes out the window in case of rain. And indeed, in the post-practice press conference, the drivers talked a bit about difficulties driving this track in the rain. Generally speaking, they noted that last year's qualification in the rain was "fun" and that the only real issue was with puddles of water was on one stretch.

IMS / IndyCar top brass are looking at the weather for sure. They know full well that the coming weather front produced tornadoes in Nebraska last night. They plan on discussing the situation on Friday night to see what plans need to be made. As noted in the press conference, the majority of weather-related IndyCar cancellations have come because of lightning strikes, another real possibility. Many in the press room recall a F2 tornado touch down a scant 10 miles from the speedway at the end of the 2004 race, forcing an end to the race and a mass evacuation to what shelter IMS had for those who remained at the facility.

Number of the Day, part D: Helio Castroneves marks his 300th career IndyCar start on Saturday. Tony Kanaan will mark his 300th for the Indy 500. For all of those wondering, the official policy of IndyCar — as it has been for a few years now — has been to count all wins and poles and starts for every series that has preceded the current IndyCar series: AAA, USAC, CART, IRL, CCWS are all included. Which means that Scott Dixon has 36 wins, which includes his 1 win in CART.

Finally (for this report) a fan asked me online why Firestone doesn't have an "intermediate" rain tire to bridge the gap when tracks are starting to dry out. When asked, Firestone reps reiterated that their current IndyCar rain tire is already an "intermediate" — that their full-on rain tires would never be run due to the problem of the cars hydroplaning as water builds up under the mostly-flat underside of the car (they make great boats at that point). And it's not the tread, but rather, the rubber compound that makes them stick on wet tracks, and making a harder tire would mean a large loss of traction when they do hit the wet spots.

— Tim Wohlford, reporting from IMS