Practice Report for Round Three of the IndyCar Series at St. Petersburg
source: Max d'Orsonnens
It would appear that there is a dark cloud hovering above Patrick
Carpentier's head on each first day of on-track activities during an Indy Racing
League Series race weekend. And it just doesn't seem to want to go away. This
time, the Red Bull Cheever Racing driver spent most of the day in the pits
waiting for his crew to fix his Dallara-Toyota. He went out early Friday morning
for a two-hour scheduled practice, but 53 minutes into the session his car was
towed back into the pits following a mechanical failure. Carpentier ran only 14
laps around the 14-turn, 2.8968-kilometer St. Petersburg temporary street
circuit. Check-in laps they call it, laps to see how the car is handling. He
never had a chance to put new rubber on and go out to try and post a decent lap
time.
In the afternoon final 30-minute practice session, Carpentier's throttle jammed
as he was leaving the pits, and his name would not appear on the time chart.
Practice sessions are important during an IRL road course weekend as the
combined times set the qualifying order. The Canadian driver was classified 19th
overall out of 21 drivers registered for Round 4 of the 2005 schedule. This
means that track conditions won't be at their best when he attempts his
single-lap qualifying run on Saturday afternoon.
''I went out to see how the car was handling,'' Carpentier said. ''Usually on a
street or a road course, you spend the first part of the session on old or wet
tires to clean the track when you make sure that everything is working fine on
the car. I guess it was not, because everything stopped in Turn 2, and I was
towed back to the pits. That was the end of my day's work. It's a shame because
there is only half an hour of practice left on Saturday morning before
qualifying. It's going to be tough to find in 30 minutes, the right road course
set-ups on a car that was built mainly to run on ovals. Fortunately, my teammate
Alex Barron looked good with a 10th-place finish. The team will use his set-ups
for my car, but I will have to find out whether we then adjust the car for
qualifying or for the race. Tonight's meeting will be all about strategy.''