Oilpressure

Greetings from a sundrenched Barber Motorsports Park. The ambient temperature at 10:00 is already 63°, but it feels but warmer than that. The weatherman could not have produced a better day to be at a race track. Unfortunately, tomorrow promises to be completely different. It is going to be much cooler and rain – lots of rain and potentially dangerous thunderstorms.

If you remember the 2014 race here that was run in a downpour, puddling was a major issue. That race, won by Ryan Hunter-Reay, ended up being a timed race. We could be facing the same issues again tomorrow, unless lightning becomes an issue. IndyCar will race in the rain but not in lightning. I’ll feel very safe if a severe thunderstorm comes through. The media center here is a temporary glorified tent supported by aluminum beams. That shouldn’t present any problems in an electrical storm.

The Global MX-5 Cup Race is going on right now. Those races are always entertaining to watch. The are relatively slow, but have a lot of good passing and produce good racing.

The third and final practice for the Verizon IndyCar Series gets underway at 10:50 CDT. The Andretti Autosport cars made good gains between the first and second practices yesterday. A team that really needs to find some speed is the Foyt team. Tony Kanaan and Matheus Leist were twentieth and twenty-first respectively over the two practice sessions on Friday. AJ Foyt Enterprises had been showing speed in the first three races of the season, but they seem lost this weekend thus far.

Susan finally made it here around 7:00 last night, but I had left the track by then. She is here and will be posting here later today. I will also post sometime between practice and qualifying, which will air live at 3:00 CDT on CNBC and then will re-air at 5:30 CDT on NBCSN. You may follow me on Twitter for photos, videos and comments throughout the day at @Oilpressureblog, and Susan at @MrsOilpressure. Please check back later.

George Phillips

This entry was posted on April 21, 2018 at 10:31 am and is filed under IndyCar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.