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Team Penske duo gets in full day at Indy 500

May 15, 2008 - 10:26 PM By Bruce Martin PA SportsTicker Contributing Editor

INDIANAPOLIS (Ticker) -- When Ryan Briscoe and Helio Castroneves arrived at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway on Thursday, they didn't expect to get much time on the track with another day of rain expected in Central Indiana.

But in one of the weirder meteorological developments in a city plagued by rain the past two weeks, a full six hours of practice was completed as the weather system split to the north and the south.

While rain fell 50 miles north in Kokomo and 15 miles south in Greenwood, no rain fell in Indianapolis.

That allowed teams some much-needed practice, as the 11 drivers in the race prepare for Race Day conditions and the other cars fighting for the 33-car starting lineup have to prepare for both Race Day and qualifying setups.

That made for an extremely busy day of practice, as 2,628 laps were run in Thursday's session.

Briscoe was the fastest of the day with a lap of 223.708 miles per hour, running full-fuel tank setups. He also ran 74 laps.

Castroneves, a two-time Indy 500 winner who also won "Dancing with the Stars" last November, was second-fastest at 223.284 mph after running 94 laps.

"We are amazed to get this much time in actually," said Briscoe, who had his doubts when he arrived at the track. "At five minutes to 12, I was getting ready to go and the team was like, 'We aren't going to get much done here.' But the rain has been all around us and hasn't hit us."

Thursday was the first full day of practice since Tuesday, May 6 - when veterans took to the track for the first day. Last Saturday included a full day of activity because it was Pole Day, but qualification attempts limited the amount of practice time available for the full field.

To get Thursday's full practice in was almost a bonus to the field.

"It is definitely good; any time we can get during a rainy month like this is a bonus," Briscoe said. "The big thing was the first chance we had to fill the car up with fuel, run the tires down and see how much consistency we can get out of it and have a feel for what we can do in the race."

While Briscoe and Castroneves are both safely in the starting lineup, drivers such as Ryan Hunter-Reay and Graham Rahal were bumped out of the field last Saturday and are still trying to get into the race when qualifications resume on Saturday and Sunday.

Hunter-Reay, who crashed hard into the third-turn wall on his second qualification attempt with 40 minutes left in the session on Saturday, was not happy Thursday when he complained of a "loose" race car.

"The guys have to give me a better car than this in order to get around under these conditions," Hunter-Reay said.

Indy 500 pole-winner Scott Dixon was third-fastest at 223.192 mph, followed by Tony Kanaan and Tomas Scheckter.

Will Power of Australia was the fastest of the non-qualified drivers; he was sixth at 222.657 mph.

"Who knows, Race Day might be like this or qualifying on Saturday may be like this," Power said. "So it was good to go out there and run."