Competition heating up at Open Test

SEBRING, Fla. -- Will Power watched a portion of the March 6 morning Open Test session perched between Turns 8-9 – outside of the Sebring International Raceway short course.

Fortunately, he was able to switch his street clothes for black/red/white firesuit and get in seven laps before the completion of the three hours of track time. About 19 hours earlier, a fire caused by a fuel leak curtailed the first day of activity for the No. 12 Verizon Team Penske car on the 1.67-mile, 11-turn circuit.

“It wasn’t a big issue,” said Power, whose quickest lap (52.6777 seconds) in the waning minutes before the lunch break was almost a half-second faster than his best lap the previous day. “Fortunately, we got it out soon enough that we didn’t do too much damage that would have lost us the test day (March 6). The guys did such an awesome job getting the (new Chevrolet) engine in so quickly and up and running. We were able to go out and shake it down. The car felt fine. All credit to the guys to do that.”

Credit Power with some quick work, too, as he climbed from the car and grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher to douse the flames in foam.

“No, I won’t be joining the fire brigade,” he joked.

Someone quipped later in the day that he was on fire in the afternoon session with a best lap of 52.2059 seconds, which was 0.0646 of a second off the pace set by Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves (52.1413). Actually, a small fire on the car developed in the afternoon session, but Power was able to get to pit lane for it to be extinguished and he continued. The other member of the triumvirate, Ryan Briscoe, was third quick (52.2072) -- just 0.0659 of a second behind Castroneves.

Ten drivers participated in the two-day spring training in preparation for the season-opening Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg on March 25. Top to 10th were separated by 1 second.

"It is clear that it is pretty even so far," said Power, the IZOD IndyCar Series championship runner-up the past two seasons. "The moment of truth is going to be St. Pete. Everyone is going to have what they've got. There is no sandbagging or anything. We shall see there."

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Andretti Autosport's Ryan Hunter-Reay, who topped the time chart on the first day, was fourth quick (52.3466) and Simon Pagenaud of Schmidt/Hamilton Motorsports was fifth/first among Honda teams (52.4698). A total of 1,716 laps were completed over the two days.

"It's an exciting moment for INDYCAR with three different engines," Pagenaud said. "You can tell the Chevys and Hondas are really close; we ran together with Will and Ryan (Hunter-Reay) at some point and I can see it's going to be close. As Will said, it will come down to qualifying (at St. Pete) to see who's strongest."

A second group of drivers will test at Sebring on March 8-9.

The Open Test is open to the public each day (9 a.m.-5 p.m.). There is a $10 admission charge. Firestone Indy Lights will conduct an Open Test at the facility Feb. 7. Live Timing & Scoring is unavailable, but sessions reports will be available on www.indycar.com each day.

Open Test lineup
Group 2 (9 a.m.-noon and 1-5 p.m. March 8-9):

No. 4 JR Hildebrand (Panther Racing) – Chevrolet
No. 5 E.J. Viso (KV Racing Technology) – Chevrolet
No. 6 Katherine Legge (Lotus Dragon Racing) – Lotus
No. 7 Sebastien Bourdais (Lotus Dragon Racing) – Lotus
No. 8 Rubens Barrichello (KV Racing Technology) – Chevrolet
No. 9 Scott Dixon (Target Chip Ganassi Racing) – Honda
No. 10 Dario Franchitti (Target Chip Ganassi Racing) – Honda
No. 11 Tony Kanaan (KV Racing Technology) – Chevrolet
No. 14 Mike Conway (A.J. Foyt Racing) – Honda
No. 15 Takuma Sato (Rahal Letterman Lanigan) – Honda
No. 20 Ed Carpenter (Ed Carpenter Racing) – Chevrolet
No. 22 Oriol Servia (Lotus Dreyer & Reinbold Racing) – Lotus
No. 38 Graham Rahal (Service Central Chip Ganassi Racing) – Honda
No. 67 Josef Newgarden (Sarah Fisher Hartman Racing) – Honda
No. 83 Charlie Kimball (Novo Nordisk Chip Ganassi Racing) – Honda
No. 98 Alex Tagliani (Team Barracuda – BHA) – Lotus