No Practice on Day 1 Due to Badly Timed Rain
Indianapolis Motor SpeedwayPractice for the 107th Indianapolis 500 was set to begin today. Plenty of track time, consisting of one hour in the morning and three hours in the afternoon, was scheduled, but light rain had been falling since the morning.
Rain had eased off by noon, and thanks to the officials' efforts, the track was expected to be dry enough and ready before 2:00 pm. Many of the teams brought their cars out of the garages and into the pits.
Just as the green flag was about to be flown, rain began to fall once again and the cars were returned to their garages. At 4:00 pm, organizers announced that there would be no practice sessions today.
In response to the cancelation of track time today, changes have been made to tomorrow's schedule. At 10:00 am, all cars will be given a chance of an installation lap, followed by a track time for drivers who did not complete the rookie test. From noon, all cars will be allowed on track for a practice session that ends at 6:00 pm. Today, which was supposed to be the first day of the race weekend, conditions were chilly with temperatures in the 16-17 degree Celsius range, but tomorrow, daytime highs are forecast to reach 23 degrees. Tomorrow is expected to be a busy day with all teams making full use of their track time to clock as many laps as they can to gather data.
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I would have liked to have at least done an installation lap today to check the car, but Chip Ganassi Racing is well prepared and we may not need to worry about that. If something happens, we will take care of it today and tomorrow we can push hard from the start. Conditions were too cool today, so we may not have gathered much useful data. Tomorrow, we will start with the car setting based on the data obtained from the joint test held in April, then make changes according to the conditions and the program prepared by the engineers. There is the possibility of rain again on Friday, so we will continue our runs while taking the weather into consideration.
I would have liked to have at least done an installation lap today to check the car, but Chip Ganassi Racing is well prepared and we may not need to worry about that. If something happens, we will take care of it today and tomorrow we can push hard from the start. Conditions were too cool today, so we may not have gathered much useful data. Tomorrow, we will start with the car setting based on the data obtained from the joint test held in April, then make changes according to the conditions and the program prepared by the engineers. There is the possibility of rain again on Friday, so we will continue our runs while taking the weather into consideration.
