By virtue of being the fastest driver in the Friday practice sessions, Helio Castroneves has won the right to determine Saturday's single car qualifying order for the St. Petersburg Grand Prix. Castroneves' best lap of 1.01.6016seconds put him just 0.0876seconds ahead of Tony Kanaan, with Scott Dixon third, Dario Franchitti fourth and Marco Andretti rounding out the top five.

“My engineer Ron Ruzewski did a good job,” said Castroneves. “He did some kind of voodoo stuff, and my car all of the sudden it started going really fast. It was great, towards the end I knew Tony was going for a good lap and it reminded me kind of like old times in Indy Lites when we were always trying to beat each other.”

Kanaan downplayed the practice session shootout, though he did take new tires late in the session to try and put down another quick lap.

“Once we saw that a lot of people were not improving their lap times, we switched modes a little bit and tried a couple of changes for the ‘race' car,” said Kanaan, who along with Castroneves has appeared in all five Fast Six sessions run in the IndyCar Series. “Although I wanted to be first, I think the last three to four spots on the single lap qualifying they don't make a lot of difference. I'm pretty happy, it was a good day for us. It's a good start.”

Castroneves will likely choose to invert the qualifying order, giving him the advantage of going out last and knowing what time it will take to get into the top six. If he does that, he will get a bit of a break, then the fast six single lap qualifiers will go onto the track to try and improve their starting positions.

Scott Sharp had the scariest incident of the day when he misjudged the apex for turn 12. The front of his green and black Rahal Letterman Dallara popped three feet into the air when Sharp made a direct hit into the high rumble strips on the inside of the high speed left handed kink. Sharp was lucky to miss the concrete barriers and instead bounced several hundred yards through the grass, dirt and sand that lines that portion of the track before sliding to a stop in turn 13 just in front of his teammate, Jeff Simmons.

“I was really trying to put down a fast lap,” said Sharp. “And I just caught a little too much curb. You have to use a little of the curb in turn 12, but I carried in a little too much speed. It's a little disappointing after successful tests at Daytona and Sebring, but we'll be back tomorrow.”

Having made no contact, Sharp was restarted by the IndyCar Series safety crew before driving back into the pits on his own.

Last week's winner, Dan Wheldon, finished the session sixth quickest and will spend tomorrow looking for more speed.

“It was an okay day,” said Wheldon. “We struggled a little with the balance of the car, but even when we were struggling, we were still pretty strong. It gives you a lot of confidence that if we make some improvements, which I think we will, we should climb up the order.”

Sarah Fisher was the slowest of 18 cars in St. Petersburg, though that was not surprising considering she has never raced any type of car on a road course.

Other notables were Tomas Scheckter at ninth quick, Danica Patrick in twelfth, and Buddy Rice 13th.

St. Petersburg Grand Prix IndyCar Series Practice 2

1 Helio Castroneves (3) ... 1:01.6016 105.192
2 Tony Kanaan (11) 0.0876 1:01.6892 105.043
3 Scott Dixon (9) 0.2751 1:01.8767 104.724
4 Dario Franchitti (27) 0.4044 1:02.0060 104.506
5 Marco Andretti (26) 0.9632 1:02.5648 103.573
6 Dan Wheldon (10) 1.0632 1:02.6648 103.407
7 Kosuke Matsuura (55) 1.1753 1:02.7769 103.223
8 Sam Hornish Jr (6) 1.1808 1:02.7824 103.214
9 Tomas Scheckter (2) 1.1819 1:02.7835 103.212
10 Darren Manning (14) 1.2433 1:02.8449 103.111
11 Vitor Meira (4) 1.3033 1:02.9049 103.013
12 Danica Patrick (7) 1.4062 1:03.0078 102.844
13 Buddy Rice (15) 2.1440 1:03.7456 101.654
14 Jeff Simmons (17) 2.4674 1:04.0690 101.141
15 Scott Sharp (8) 2.6449 1:04.1991 100.936
16 A J Foyt IV (22) 3.1110 1:04.7126 100.135
17 Ed Carpenter (20) 3.1850 1:04.7866 100.021
18 Sarah Fisher (5) 5.2213 1:06.8229 96.973.

ORS / CAPSIS International