MVN - Most Valuable Network

Indy Japan Practice 1 Report

The first practice session for the Indy Japan 300 was a relatively slow one as only one car cracked the 200 m.p.h. mark in the 90-minute run.

Target Chip Ganassi Racing’s Scott Dixon rattled off a lap of 27.3348 seconds at 200.184 m.p.h. in the No. 9 machine to lead the way in Thursday’s first practice session on the 1.5-mile oval (Wednesday night in the States). However, the speeds were off a fair bit from last year, considering that Darren Manning qualified last at Motegi in 2007 with a speed of 199.460 m.p.h.

A good chunk of the practice only saw one or two cars on the track at a time, while the majority of drivers waited for the green track to get worked in and have rubber laid down on it. Around the halfway point of the session, more activity began to take place on the track.

Dixon’s teammate, two-time Motegi winner Dan Wheldon, was second on the charts at 199.863 m.p.h. Third place went to defending race winner Tony Kanaan, while Marco Andretti and Helio Castroneves rounded out the top five in practice.

Castroneves and A.J. Foyt IV brought out the yellow with about 12 minutes to go, when debris from cut tires on their machines caught the eye of IRL officials.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.