#21 Giaffone IRL Chicagoland Friday Practice

Giaffone Seventh and Ninth in Chicagoland Practice Sessions

JOLIET, Ill. (Sept. 6, 2002) -- Felipe Giaffone and the #21 Hollywood/Mo Nunn Racing Chevrolet G-Force back-up car survived a rough-and-tumble opening day of practice for Sunday's Delphi Indy 300 at Chicagoland Speedway today with the seventh-fastest time of the afternoon session.  Giaffone, who at the tail end of today's morning practice spun on his own oil and made heavy contact with the outside wall between Turns 3 and 4, toured the 1.5-mile tri-oval in 24.6928 seconds (221.558 mph) in his back-up car this afternoon.  He clocked the ninth-fastest time in the morning session at 24.6674 seconds (221.831 mph) in the primary car before the accident, which also involved fellow title contender and defending series champion Sam Hornish, Jr.  Hornish's car sustained damage while running over Giaffone's debris.

Buddy Rice had the fastest time of the day with a morning lap of 24.4578 seconds (223.732 mph), followed in the session by teammate Eddie Cheever, Jr., at 24.4690 seconds (223.630 mph).  Hornish's afternoon time of 24.4910 seconds (223.429 mph) was fastest of the session but only the third-fastest lap of the day.  Among the title contenders, points leader Helio Castroneves was 12th in the morning and 21st in the afternoon.  His teammate Gil de Ferran, who trails Castroneves by just one point in the standings, was 15th in the morning and eighth in the afternoon.  Hornish, who is 27 points behind Castroneves in third place in the standings, was seventh in the morning session.  Giaffone is 46 points behind Castroneves in the points, in fourth place overall.

Practice resumes at 8 a.m. local time (9 a.m. EDT) Saturday, with pole qualifying set to begin at 10 a.m. local time (11 a.m. EDT).  Final practice will be at 4:15 p.m. local time (5:15 p.m. EDT) Saturday.  Race time Sunday is noon local time (1 p.m. EDT) with a live broadcast set for ABC-TV. 

 FELIPE GIAFFONE

 "It's very good when you can have a spare car like this, ready to go.  My guys did a great job preparing it for the afternoon practice.  My primary car, as usual, is not good for qualifying.  I believe the Infinitis are going to be on the pole, as usual.  But I believe I have a good setup for the race.  It probably sounds like a broken record because I say that every week, but that's always the case, and we always seem to get the job done on race day.  We have a good car in traffic.  It's working very well in the draft.  We are doing the best we can when we're on our own.  We ran half-tanks all afternoon, and the car had pretty much the same setup that we had in the primary car this morning.  We will continue to work on our race setup and hope for the best in qualifying.  Unfortunately, my primary car is a write-off.  So we will use the car that Tony Kanaan used in the Indy 500 as our spare car for Texas next week."