Sam Hornish, Jr., led Friday's sun drenched mid afternoon practice session at the 1.5mile Texas Motor Speedway. Spread over two hours, the field of twenty-cars was split into two one hour groups for the session which saw teams work on both qualifying and race set-ups.

Hornish circled the track at an average of 214.762miles per hour (24.3898seconds), outrunning Vitor Meira, Scott Dixon and Dario Franchitti.

The latter two had interesting sessions. Franchitti elected to run just eleven laps, while Dixon crashed in to the SAFER barrier in turn two.

“I'm fine, the Commit car isn't quite as good though unfortunately,” said Dixon. “It felt like something broke first.”

Replays validate what Dixon felt as the right rear corner seemed to sit down slightly before the car did a quarter spin and backed into the wall. The car suffered right rear and right front damage, forcing the team to put together a back up car which carries traditional red Target signage. IRL rules prevent teams from having an engine in their back-up cars.

Jeff Simmons of Rahal Letterman Racing had a similar looking problem on Thursday when his right rear tow link bent. Happening closer to the exit of the turn, Simmons was able to chase his car up the banking, narrowly avoiding the turn four wall.

Times in the session were skewed considerably by drafting as some drivers did a better job than others of avoiding traffic during their simulated qualifying runs. Most were able to run at least two miles per hour quicker with a car in front of them, versus practicing alone.

Milka Duno remains last on the time sheet, though she is nearly three tenths of a second better than yesterday. She is still 0.7 arrears of the fast time, and more importantly is spending very little time running around other drivers.

Drafting and the ability to handle the draft will be key on Saturday night, and Duno has avoided practicing in those conditions over the past two days. She will get no further chances as the only remaining pre-race activity is qualifying later this evening.

Texas - Practice session 3
1 Sam Hornish Jr (6) ... 24.3898 214.762
2 Vitor Meira (4) 0.0748 24.4646 214.105
3 Scott Dixon (9) 0.0823 24.4721 214.040
4 Dario Franchitti (27) 0.0996 24.4894 213.888
5 Scott Sharp (8) 0.1002 24.4900 213.883
6 Danica Patrick (7) 0.1276 24.5174 213.644
7 Tony Kanaan (11) 0.1338 24.5236 213.590
8 Marco Andretti (26) 0.1427 24.5325 213.513
9 Dan Wheldon (10) 0.1761 24.5659 213.222
10 Darren Manning (14) 0.2299 24.6197 212.756
11 Helio Castroneves (3) 0.2313 24.6211 212.744
12 Tomas Scheckter (2) 0.2335 24.6233 212.725
13 Kosuke Matsuura (55) 0.2633 24.6531 212.468
14 Buddy Rice (15) 0.2694 24.6592 212.416
15 Jeff Simmons (17) 0.2702 24.6600 212.409
16 AJ Foyt IV (22) 0.3112 24.7010 212.056
17 Jon Herb (19) 0.3371 24.7269 211.834
18 Sarah Fisher (5) 0.3445 24.7343 211.771
19 Ed Carpenter (20) 0.4957 24.8855 210.484
20 Milka Duno (23) 0.7229 25.1127 208.580

ORS / CAPSIS International