Carpentier shines with a sixth-place finish in 1st day of testing
source:
redbullcheeverracing.com
The newly configured Red Bull Cheever Racing team finished up their first day
of IndyCar Series open testing in heavy traffic on the 2.21-mile road course at
Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Today marked day one of road course testing with a full field of cars. The team
brought their new Toyota engine, Technical Director Henri Durand, and driver
Patrick Capentier along with all the team veterans to the put the changes to the
test.
Carpentier started and ended the day in his no. 83 Red Bull Cheever Racing
Dallara/Toyota/Firestone with lots of enthusiasm.
I am very happy with today. We made a lot of progress after the morning session
and gained twice as much ground as the other teams, cutting our time behind the
leader from 1.5 seconds to .8. Everyone aims for first place, so we still have
to work, work, work, but I know Red Bull Cheever Racing can do it.²
During the afternoon session Carpentier logged an impressive fast lap time of
111.740 mph (1 minute, 11.740 seconds), only .7577 seconds behind today¹s leader
earning him the sixth fastest lap of the day. He was able to log 68 laps by days
end.
For Alex Barron the day went a little differently. It began with high
expectations but as the day progressed some of those went unmet.
Unfortunately, we didn¹t spend as much time on track as we would have liked to.
We had a system installation problem with the car and didn¹t get to log many
laps. I¹m going to stay positive, have a thorough debrief with my engineers and
go at it full speed ahead tomorrow.