source: http://www.teamplayers.ca/
Team Player's drivers Patrick Carpentier and Paul Tracy conducted their
first combined CART pre-season testing sessions of the winter this past weekend,
clocking some impressive fast laps on the Laguna Seca road course.
Carpentier, who ran close to 200 laps during the two-day session that brought
together most of the CART teams, clocked a lap of 69.712 seconds (115.573 mph),
the third-best performance of the weekend, after Newman/Haas drivers Bruno
Junqueira and Sebastien Bourdais. Tracy, who put in about 165 laps, produced the
fourth-fastest lap (70.157 seconds, 114.840 mph).
"I'm getting more comfortable each time out," said Tracy of his
second testing session with Team Player's. "We still have some work to do
to try and coax more speed out of the car, but we made some big strides from our
Saturday session to the one on Sunday. We had no mechanical problems and we got
a lot of work done from an engineering standpoint."
Tracy said the fact Team Player's had both of its cars at the same testing
session for the first time in this off-season produced plenty of useful data,
some of which help in his adaptation process with his new team.
"This is the first time I've been paired with a teammate (Patrick) who is
a left-footed braker," explained Tracy. "Because Pat brakes with his
left foot, he's able to brake a lot deeper than I can. That type of thing
shows up on the data that we've compiled this weekend, so I can take a look at
it and see how I can approach braking a bit later and, consequently, that might
help me gain a split second here and there."
Carpentier said he was satisfied by the consistency of his fast laps, although
he added the goal of the weekend sessions was more in gathering information on
the Team Player's Champ car than clocking fast laps.
"There is a different approach to testing this year," added
Carpentier. "Because there are so few testing sessions, the focus is more
on the mechanical side than the aerodynamics. We now have only nine more hours
of testing before the start of the season, so we have to make sure we get the
most of our testing sessions."
The nine remaining hours of testing will be consumed at the three-day CART
spring-training session in Sebring, Florida, February 4-6.