Will Power has set the pace during the opening day of practice for the opening IndyCar round on the streets of St Petersburg in Florida.
The Toowoomba racer put his Verizon Team Penske car ahead of reigning IZOD IndyCar Series champion Ryan Hunter-Reay with a best lap of 1 minute, 1.4467 seconds, while Hunter-Reay checked in second at 1:01.6252.
In all, 18 of the 25 drivers were within one second of Power.
“I think we’ll get 59s especially with the red (alternate) tires,” Power said.
“Just the year of development has made the difference. The engine manufacturers got a bit more power and just through the development drivers get a little more downforce and a lot of grip.”
The big story from the Friday sessions was the speed of Simona de Silvestro who was third quickest. The time justifying her move to KV Racing Technology.
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“It’s a big difference. Last year we came in here and we knew it was going to be a struggle, and this year we come after a really good Barber test and it showed right away,” said de Silvestro.
“Even this morning I thought we were pretty quick even if we still have a little bit of work to do on the car. It’s definitely a relief to know we can be fast and we can be right up there with the other guys.”
Off the pace were Ganassi duo Dario Franchitti (17th) and Kiwi Scott Dixon (19th).
TIMES: Friday combined – St Petersburg
| Position | Driver | Time |
| 1 | Will Power | 1:01.4467 |
| 2 | Ryan Hunter-Reay | 1:01.625 |
| 3 | Simona de Silvestro | 1:01.6895 |
| 4 | Oriol Servia | 1:01.7650 |
| 5 | Takuma Sato | 1:01.7703 |
| 7 | Helio Castroneves | 1:01.7853 |
| 8 | Tony Kanaan | 1:01.8087 |
| 8 | James Hinchcliffe | 1:02.0039 |
| 9 | Tristan Vautier (R) | 1:02.0459 |
| 10 | Marco Andretti | 1:02.0877 |
| 11 | James Jakes | 1:02.1030 |
| 12 | Simon Pagenaud | 1:02.1134 |
| 13 | Charlie Kimball | 1:02.1962 |
| 14 | Graham Rahal | 1:02.3596 |
| 15 | EJ Viso | 1:02.3622 |
| 16 | Justin Wilson | 1:02.3833 |
| 17 | Dario Franchitti | 1:02.4086 |
| 18 | Sebastien Bourdais | 1:02.4166 |
| 19 | Scott Dixon | 1:02.5031 |
| 20 | Alex Tagliani | 1:02.5098 |
| 21 | Josef Newgarden | 1:02.5305 |
| 22 | Sebastian Saavedra | 1:02.5581 |
| 23 | JR Hildebrand | 1:02.9057 |
| 24 | Ed Carpenter | 1:03.1420 |
| 25 | Ana Beatriz | 1:03.9670 |
