INDYCAR BACK TO AUSTRALIA?
An interesting quote this morning from Australian Grand Prix chairman Ron Walker regarding his displeasure for the sound and vigor of the new F1 races that raced at Albert Park included a surprising reference to the Verizon IndyCar Series.

“Bernie is clearly in breach of his contract, because this is not what we bought,” “I didn’t buy a wimp … I bought a giant with noise,” Walker told the Herald Sun before telling London’s The Independent: “We may as well go and buy an IndyCar race for $3.5m. It would be hugely louder. It would be a drastic change to switch to IndyCar, but we cannot go on like this.”

RACER asked Hulman & Company CEO Mark Miles whether IndyCar would have an interest in returning to Australia, and while he wouldn’t confirm specific intentions for racing Down Under, he said international expansion remains a top priority next season.

“We are exploring options for adding events in an organized and strategic way,” Miles noted. “We have not had any conversation with the promoters of the Australian F1 race, but have read the reports. At this point our focus is on finding races in the February and March range in 2015 with Brazil and the Middle East being our first targets, but they aren’t the only areas of interest for the Verizon IndyCar Series.”

Stay tuned…

HAPPY DAYS FOR HONDA
Anyone wearing a Honda logo last year on the opening Friday at St. Pete was looking for the nearest tree to hang themselves after the Japanese brand showed up well behind their rivals at Chevy.

The pressure and public shaming from Chip Ganassi, who served as Honda’s lead team at the time, was painful.

“I don’t know if they want to win bad enough,” said Ganassi. “They talk about everything at Honda but winning. They said for years and years and years they want competition. Now they’ve got competition, and they are not talking about winning. I feel like they want to sit around and hold hands and sing Kumbaya. I want to win.”

Ganassi announced the team’s switch to Chevy in October at the Houston IndyCar race, one round before driver Scott Dixon clinched the championship at Fontana, and found his team looking for more pace yet again on Friday at St. Pete, albeit with a different engine partner.

Hondas were marginally faster than the Chevys today, so there’s no reason to make claims about one manufacturer having the upper hand this early in the season, but it was nice to see the year begin with IndyCar’s engine protagonists at similar starting points.

Of the drivers in the top-10, Hondas claimed P1, 2, 5, 6, and 7 while Chevys took P2, 3, 8, 9 and 10. In 2013, Takuma Sato was fifth fastest on Friday, 0.323 second behind Will Power in first. This year, Sato (pictured, TOP) was fastest, 0.082 ahead of Power who was tops among the Chevys.

Honda isn’t ready to book a place atop the podium on Sunday, but HPD’s Mark Crawford told RACER they are pleased to open the 2014 season with a competitive first salvo.

“If we were really bad, we wouldn’t have gotten this result,” he said. “This is racing; the guys are going out there and driving hard. This is a practice session; there’s nothing to be gained by not giving it everything you have. I think we saw everyone’s good first shot at it this morning, and as for last year, it was a beacon for us, a reference for us. It’s been a focus for some time about coming out of the box in 2014 with a good engine.”

TRAP SPEEDS
Verizon IndyCar Series teams run high-downforce configurations at St. Pete, but as each team uses slightly different settings and downforce levels, it’s hard to pinpoint whether certain trap speeds are due to outright power or lighter aerodynamic loadings.

With that proviso in mind, it was interesting to see:

Simon Pagenaud set the best trap speed on the front straight at 164.525mph. The top Chevy was Sebastien Bourdais at 163.800. Tony Kanaan was fastest last year on Friday driving the car Bourdais took over with a 163.245.

We’ll monitor the progression tomorrow in qualifying.

Montoya is confident of more tomorrow. (LAT photo)MONTOYA’S FIRST DAY BACK TO SCHOOL
Juan Montoya’s first day of official IndyCar action resulted in a disappointing result as the Colombian finished 19th. As he told RACER, the modest speed displayed by his No. 2 Team Penske Chevy can be fixed for Saturday.

“I’ve got a lot of understeer in the car,” he said. “We made some changes over lunch, I had oversteer, we put new tires on and I had more understeer so we didn’t really produce a lap. We know what we need to do to fix some of that. It’s hard because the sessions are so short and with all the red flags.”

Even with his hatred for understeer, the tail-happy JPM didn’t hold anything back on Friday.
“I only had two moments…didn’t hit anything yet…,” he said with a big grin.

Carlos Huertas (Marshall Pruett photo)HELLO HUERTAS
Montoya’s countryman Carlos Huertas was slowest of all on Friday, but it was expected after concluding a deal to drive Dale Coyne’s second car just last week. He wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the Dallara DW12 chassis after testing with Panther Racing earlier in the year, but after doing a seat fitting at the Coyne shop last weekend and missing out on the Spring training test at Barber, it was always going to be a rushed affair leading into opening practice.

“It helped [testing with Panther] otherwise I’d be massively off the pace,” he said. “It wasn’t ideal; we were slow this morning, but this afternoon was reasonable. It’s not bad and I know I can improve in a few places. I always try to do my best; obviously I’m going to attack when I’m driving when the car is ready, and we’ll just try to improve tomorrow.”

Huertas hopes to make up for his lack of testing after the St. Pete weekend is over.

“The team plans to test at Mid-Ohio and the Road course in Indy,” he added. “it will help, and we were behind today, but I don’t think it was as bad as many people expected.”​