AGR seems stong on the oval so far at Motegi

Tony Kanaan led the first practice season at Twin Ring Motegi as his Andretti Green Racing team swept the top three positions and reasserted themselves as a contender for Saturday's IndyJapan 300 victory.

Kanaan circled the 1.5mile oval in 27.1800 seconds (201.325mph) just nine hundredths quicker than teammate Dario Franchitti, with Danica Patrick a surprising third fastest.

AGR has struggled on the bigger tracks over the past two years, but with handling playing a key role at TRM, they appear ready to mix it up with last year's oval powers - Ganassi and Penske.

Also contributing to the mixed up time sheet was the cold and threatening weather. With a strong wind blowing across the race track and the mercury topping out at 51 degrees, many teams elected to concentrate strictly on race set-ups and long runs in case later practices were rained out.

This seemed to be the course of action for defending race champ and this morning's fourth quickest driver, Helio Castroneves. Running in the slightly less advantageous first group, Castroneves turned 52 laps - the most of the session - as he worked on long runs instead of maximum speed.

By turning the third fastest lap, Danica Patrick proved that given a good car, she is quite capable of getting the most from it. The fourth AGR car, driven by Marco Andretti, was just eleventh as he is still struggling with his oval track set-up. Likely running a different set-up than his teammates so as to gain more data overall for the team, Andretti struggled to get up to speed.

Interestingly, at the last oval event in Miami, the 20 year old driver was forced to park his car early because of severe handling issues that left him feeling, “scared to death,” while on the track.

Vitor Meira had the only major incident of the session when he crashed heavily into the turn two SAFER barrier just 3 laps in to practice.

Suffering severe left rear and left front damage in the incident, Meira's Panther Racing team will now pull out their back-up car for the afternoon session.

Team officials attributed the crash to cold tires and some slight bottoming that “unloaded” the chassis, causing Meira to get loose and spin backwards in to the wall.

Motegi Practice Times
Pos Driver Diff Best Time Best Speed Best Lap

1 Tony Kanaan (11) --.--- 27.1800 201.325
2 Dario Franchitti (27) 0.090 27.2700 200.660
3 Danica Patrick (7) 0.180 27.3600 200.000
4 Dan Wheldon (10) 0.270 27.4500 199.344
5 Helio Castroneves (3) 27.4690 199.206
6 Sam Hornish Jr (6) 0.368 27.5480 198.635
7 Tomas Scheckter (2) 0.385 27.5650 198.513
8 Scott Dixon (9) 0.409 27.5890 198.340
9 Kosuke Matsuura (55) 0.436 27.6160 198.146
10 Scott Sharp (8) 0.452 27.6320 198.031
11 Marco Andretti (26) 0.544 27.7240 197.374
12 AJ Foyt IV (22) 0.592 27.7720 197.033
13 Ed Carpenter (20) 0.766 27.9460 195.806
14 Buddy Rice (15) 0.778 27.9580 195.722
15 Jeff Simmons (17) 0.900 28.0800 194.872
16 Sarah Fisher (5) 1.111 28.2910 193.418
17 Darren Manning (14) 1.239 28.4190 192.547
18 Vitor Meira (4) 2.472 29.6520 184.541

ORS / CAPSIS International