Team Player's driver Paul
Tracy, the current leader in the Champ Car World Series drivers' standings,
was among 12 drivers taking part Thursday in a testing session on the venerable
Road America course, site of the August 3 race in the series. "We really covered the
board in terms of what we needed to do," said Todd Malloy, the chief
engineer for Tracy's No. 3 car. "We worked mainly on aerodynamic
components specific to the Road America track. We tried different shock
absorbers/dampers and got some quality information from the session." Most of the contending teams in
the series were on hand for the session. Tracy ran 27 laps, covering 110 miles,
on the equivalent of two fuel stints, a simulation of the pit frequency during
the race on the 4.048 road course, where Tracy has three career poles and two
victories, most recently in 2000. "It's always a lot of fun
running laps on Road America, even testing laps," said Tracy, whose best
lap on Thursday was one minute, 45.07 seconds, third fastest by the time Team
Player's packed up for the day. "I'm happy with the balance of the car. We
have a good set-up that I expect will enable us to run well when we come back
here in August. "The only disappointing
thing about the session today was not putting in as many laps as we would have
liked because of the punctures we sustained on the two rear tires," added
Tracy. "We were only allowed the two sets of tires, so the punctures
prematurely ended the session. But we couldn't do much about it." On the strength of two consecutive podium finishes, including his second-place finish last weekend at Portland, Tracy has recaptured the lead in the drivers' standings, a 99-95 edge over Brazilian Bruno Junqueira.
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