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Briscoe Leads The Way At Indianapolis

INDIANAPOLIS, May 15 – Ryan Briscoe was the fastest of 35 drivers that participated in day-long practice at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The Australian’s fastest lap was 223.708 miles per hour.

“Tomorrow might be different, and we may run just as much down-force, so we might have to change the car,” he said. “We wanted to be careful around the guys that weren’t qualified because you never know, and they might be doing a low-fuel run and they could run out of fuel in a corner. I was looking for the guys who were already qualified.”

Helio Castroneves was second fastest at 223.284 mph and pole winner Scott Dixon was third at 223.192 mph.

Tony Kanaan was fourth followed by Tomas Scheckter and Will Power, the fastest of the non-qualified drivers.

“I am pretty confident that we’ll get in that 22 (qualifiers) somewhere,” Power said. “Indy has been interesting. It’s good for us because we get so much running time, and we need that on the ovals.”

John Andretti was next fastest with Hideki Mutoh, Dan Wheldon and Bruno Junqueira rounding out the top-10 fastest drivers.

Eighteen drivers topped the 221 mph mark and nine more were between 220 and 221 mph.

The top-11 qualifiers focused on race set-ups while the others worked on qualifying and the upcoming race.

Wheldon topped everyone in laps run with 109 followed by Mutoh with 105 and Marco Andretti with 101.

Newcomer Roger Yasukawa was at the bottom of the list in speed and laps run.

In total, 2,628 laps were completed by the participants, and no incidents occurred during the busy day. The laps completed represented 31 per cent of the month’s total.

Although rain was predicted, it didn’t come although blustery winds in the late afternoon sent many teams back to their garages. Heavy clouds shrouded the track throughout the practice.

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