Scott Dixon, a three-time victor at The Glen, topped the charts in the No. 9 Target Chevrolet in both sessions: he turned a fast lap of 1:23.8921 seconds at 144.614 mph in the morning session and 1:22.8740 at 146.391 mph in the two-hour afternoon session to edge Castroneves and Will Power of Team Penske.
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The 36-year-old slowed down over the closing laps to conserve fuel but still finished 16 seconds ahead of American Josef Newgarden.
Power was left to settle for second place for the start of the race, finishing four-hundredths of a second down, but was fortunate to qualify so highly after initially missing out on a place in the final stage of qualifying.
Australian Will Power’s drive towards the 2016 IndyCar Championship has suffered a damaging blow.
Simon Pagenaud is the points leader for a reason.
In Sunday morning’s 30-minute warmup, the New Zealander practiced his starts and almost lost it once. The top five also included Helio Castroneves, Conor Daly and Sebastien Bourdais. Obviously everyone in our team shares a lot of information, we’re able to collect and able to put it together.” said Castroneves “It was great with this situation about the red tires and the black tires. It’s an extremely steep learning curve, and I think road courses like here at the Glen, he’s probably more used to as opposed to a bumpy street course or low-grip tracks that these cars are pretty tricky at. More than 100 points will be available at the season finale September 18 at Sonoma.
It didn’t make up for his crushing eighth-place finish at Toronto in June, a race he led for 56 laps after starting from pole and lost because of pit strategy. I made a mistake and then ran out of gas because we did an extra lap which was not accounted for.
“I think the auto rolled off really strong”, he said after a superb first day at the event he won three straight years from 2005-07.
Graham Rahal, last week’s victor at Texas, also was penalized for interference and did not advance. “We sold just under 10,000 tickets in corporate in 2010”.
“I think Mike [Hull, team director] called a flawless race this weekend”.
After topping the speed charts throughout the weekend, Dixon easily sped off into the lead when the green flag signaled the start of the race.
Unless his Team Penske teammate Will Power stages a remarkable comeback in the last race of the IndyCar Series season, Simon Pagenaud should emerge from the GoPro Grand Prix of Sonoma in two weeks with a season championship.
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Mikhail Aleshin also had a scary situation.
