CART: Andretti Completes Homestead Road Course Test

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

Left-Right-Left, Team Motorola Keeps the Testing Pace

Andretti Completes Homestead Road Course Test

Indianapolis, IN-Team Motorola continued their preparations for the CART FedEx season opener with a two-day road course test at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. Under sunny skies and light breezes both Wednesday and Thursday, Team Motorola completed more than 230 miles with no mechanical problems.

Team Motorola and Andretti spent the majority of Wednesday working through four major suspension tests during the 63-mile day. Each of the front and rear suspension geometry tests is extremely time consuming so rather than focus on quickness, the team focused on their starting line for Monterrey.

"We got a good start on our road course engineering list," said team manager Tony Cotman. "We weren't looking for speed as much as we were looking for confirmation on data gathered in road course tests with Dario (Franchitti) and Paul (Tracy) earlier this month and getting our baseline set for the race in Mexico. We still have room for improvement and plan to take what we learned here and capitalize on it in Sebring next week."

The test continued on Thursday with the track and times both improving. Andretti turned his fast lap of the test on Thursday at 67.5 seconds. "The track continued to improve over the course of our two-day test," said general manager Kim Green. "With only Dario and Michael running the road course it took some time to get rubber down on the track and get some grip. Overall, it was quite a good test and a lot was accomplished."

For Andretti it was only his third test day on a road course in 2001. "We went through a lot of set-ups over the last two days and learned a lot of things," Andretti said. "We're not exactly where we want to be on set-up but the positive is that at each test, we continue to improve. Dario was pretty quick here and he was trying some very different set-ups so hopefully we can learn some things from his test and build on them."

Team Motorola will resume testing next Tuesday, February 20th in Sebring, Florida.

Text Provided by Jana Griffith

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