Morning Update No. 2 From Mid-Ohio


Josef Newgarden lead early Saturday's IndyCar morning practice, followed by Marco Andretti, EJ Viso, James Hinchcliffe.

The track was still green from rains that started last night and continued into the morning hours (about 12 hours), and had wet spots for this practice session. The session was interrupted three times — Sato went off in the turn 2 "Keyhole" turn at the start of session. Later both Kimball and Hinchcliffe had shunts, with Hinchcliffe's trip into the turn 10 tires ending the session.

The weather forecast for tomorrow's race does NOT call for rain. On the other hand, it wasn't supposed to rain last night….

Practice Results

Rank Car Driver Name Engine Time Speed Diff Gap
1 67 Newgarden, Josef HONDA 01:06.6536 121.956 –.—- –.—-
2 25 Andretti, Marco CHEVY 01:06.7244 121.826 0.0708 0.0708
3 5 Viso, EJ CHEVY 01:06.7339 121.809 0.0803 0.0095
4 27 Hinchcliffe, James CHEVY 01:06.7810 121.723 0.1274 0.0471
5 19 Wilson, Justin HONDA 01:06.9410 121.432 0.2874 0.1600
6 1 Hunter-Reay, Ryan CHEVY 01:06.9524 121.412 0.2988 0.0114
7 9 Dixon, Scott HONDA 01:06.9599 121.398 0.3063 0.0075
8 3 Castroneves, Helio CHEVY 01:07.0782 121.184 0.4246 0.1183
9 11 Kanaan, Tony CHEVY 01:07.0794 121.182 0.4258 0.0012
10 78 De Silvestro, Simona CHEVY 01:07.0841 121.173 0.4305 0.0047
11 4 Servia, Oriol CHEVY 01:07.1549 121.046 0.5013 0.0708
12 12 Power, Will CHEVY 01:07.2463 120.881 0.5927 0.0914
13 55 Vautier, Tristan (R) HONDA 01:07.2890 120.804 0.6354 0.0427
14 77 Pagenaud, Simon HONDA 01:07.4313 120.549 0.7777 0.1423
15 6 Saavedra, Sebastian CHEVY 01:07.5849 120.275 0.9313 0.1536
16 15 Rahal, Graham HONDA 01:07.6899 120.089 1.0363 0.1050
17 18 Davison, James (R) HONDA 01:07.7466 119.988 1.0930 0.0567
18 7 Bourdais, Sebastien CHEVY 01:07.7529 119.977 1.0993 0.0063
19 16 Jakes, James HONDA 01:07.7681 119.950 1.1145 0.0152
20 10 Franchitti, Dario HONDA 01:08.1657 119.251 1.5121 0.3976
21 98 Filippi, Luca (R) HONDA 01:08.5362 118.606 1.8826 0.3705
22 20 Carpenter, Ed CHEVY 01:08.5779 118.534 1.9243 0.0417
23 83 Kimball, Charlie HONDA 01:10.3230 115.592 3.6694 1.7451
24 14 Sato, Takuma HONDA 01:15.4948 107.674 8.8412 5.1718

– Say goodbye to Speed Channel. I don't mean, "Watch it fade away." I mean, say Goodbye in two weeks, completely. Racing-related staff is being fired, and long-standing shows are winding up with only 2 more shows left in most cases. Even programs like "My Classic Car" are gone in 2 weeks.

The programming decisions are being made by Fox execs in Los Angeles, and we all know how LA types feel about auto racing — they'd rather watch soccer, which is what we'll be seeing a lot of on Fox in the future. Fox angered most in the racing community when it first came into NASCAR, moving programming to channels that weren't available in many places, openly seeking to "not feature" cars whose sponsors didn't buy ads on Fox, and in general making themselves hated in media centers. And in its first race, it broke from the Dale Earnhardt Sr wreck early to cover XFL football — and was caught flat-footed by the news that followed. It took them years to recover from those early mistakes.

Worse yet for race fans, rumor has it that ESPN is looking for some soccer programming, like NBC and Fox have coming on their channels. ABC/ESPN won't be a part of NASCAR starting 2014, and there is no word on ABC's coverage of the Brickyard 400 past 2014. It is tough to imagine that they'll suddenly devote more resources to IndyCar while they cut NASCAR coverage.

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We caught up with Bryan Herta this morning before first practice, to talk about his first-weekend driver Luca Filippi. "It's a matter of managing expectations" he said, which is now a bit more difficult after fast runs yesterday. However, smiles abound in that pit.

Likewise Dale Coyne is happy with James Davison's performance so far this weekend. "He hasn't been on the track in an open wheel car in four years" Dale explained, and "It's difficult to jump in mid-season when everyone else is in mid-season form."

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Mid-Ohio people tell us that their date is locked in for next year. This isn't surprising, since the track is an easy trip for Honda officials who have a huge manufacturing presence in Ohio. It's also an easy trip for the Firestone people in Akron. And more than a few big-whig GM people are making the trip from Detroit as well.

Tim Wohlford, reporting from Mid-Ohio!!