Dixon leads Indy Car Kansas practice

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Scott Dixon quickest in Indy Car practice at Kansas Speedway | Photo 02

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Scott L. Keller | fastmachines.com | April 25, 2009

Scott Dixon set fast time in Indy Car practice at Kansas Speedway in preparation for the Road Runner Turbo Indy 300 coming up on Sunday. Dixon drove the Target car to a speed of 211.980 mph, turning in a lap on the 1.5 mile oval in 25.8137 seconds.  The Target/Chip Ganassi team has a strong history at the Kansas track, having won the race with Dan Wheldon at the wheel for the last two years in a row.

The top 10 cars in practice were all within .15 seconds of each other, showing the incredible parity in the series this year.  With stricter technical rules on ovals this year, the teams will have to work hard to gain hundredths of seconds at tracks like Kansas.

Sarah Fisher returned to action this week, and had a fantastic practice session.  Fisher ran in the top 10 for the entire session, and ended up ninth quickest.

Danica Patrick comes to Kansas after a strong fourth place finish at Long Beach, and posted the fifth quickest time in practice today.  Her teammates on the  Andretti-Green team are all off to a good start this weekend.  Marco Andretti found speed late in the session, and ended up third fastest.   Tony Kanan and Hideki Mutoh were sixth and eighth fastest, respectively.

In contrast to the first two races of the season that were run on street courses, the smaller teams and post-Champ Car teams are not running up front.  Robert Doornbos and Graham Rahal of Newman/Haas/Lanigan were 12th and 13th on the morning time sheet, and need to find two-tenths of a second in order to run in the top five.    Justin Wilson, who finished on the podium in St. Pete, was 19th this morning in the Dale Coyne entry.   He was trailed by EJ Viso in the HVM Dallara who was 20th.

Helio Castroneves has knocked the “rust” off, and was second quickest this morning.   Dan Wheldon, winner of this race in 2007 and 2008, found speed late in the session and posted the seventh fastest lap.

Qualifying takes place later today at 2 p.m. EDT with live streaming available at IndyCar.com.   The VERSUS network will also recap all of today’s action in their same-day qualifying show at 6 p.m. ET.