The Ganassi Pair of Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon led both extremely hot Friday practice sessions for Sunday’s Iowa Corn Indy 300.
The 2010 race winner lapped the 7/8 mile oval in 17.7544, just a tick faster than Dixon during the evening practice session. The speed way only around 3 mph slower than Dixon’s record lap set last year.
“I think we have a pretty good set-up,” Kanaan said. “The track suits my style. The short ovals are definitely one of my strengths. So far, we’re pretty happy with the race car so we’ll see what’s going to happen.”
The ambient temperature during the session topped 93 degrees while the track temperature was a scalding 130 degrees.
Kanaan admitted that with the extremely hot temperatures today it will be hard to predict how the cars will react once the race starts tomorrow evening.
“I don’t think it will be as bad as it was this afternoon,” said Kanaan. “Once the sun goes down the track will cool off.”
Team Penske flanked the Ganassi Duo with Will Power, Simon Pagenaud and Juan Pablo Montoya posting the third, fourth and fifth fastest lap times of the session. Chevrolet dominated the day, sweeping the top 11 positions while Andretti Autosport’s Ryan Hunter-Reay led the charge for Honda with the 12th quickest time. With the exception of KV Racing’s Stefano Coletti, Honda cars filled 11 of the bottom 12 positions.
