Roughed up "dance" surface in Sao Paulo leaves Franchitti "reeling" in securing P1

The Scot Dario Franchitti, ruling champion of the IndyCar, will begin the first race of the year from pole position, to the being the fastest today in the morning in the urban circuit of Anhembi, in classifications that were postponed by serious problems of traction in the main straight line, that caused that the pilots had serious problems of takes hold in one of the fastest parts of the track. Caption and Image Credit: mepongodepie.com

Roughed up "dance" surface in Sao Paulo leaves Franchitti "reeling" in securing P1

Defending IndyCar Series (ICS) champion, Dario Franchitti of Scotland, won the pole position (P1) for the IndyCar season-opener on the streets of Sao Paulo on Sunday. In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional step dances and is danced in reel time.

Qualifying for the inaugural Sao Paulo Indy 300 was moved to Sunday after drivers complained on Saturday that the track's front stretch lacked enough grip to keep the cars from stepping out making it unsafe.

The straightaway of the track goes through a stadium-like Sambadrome and the surface is usually painted for the traditional Carnival dancing parades and it had remained slippery even though organizers removed the paint. The straight stretches for about a third of a mile and is the only part of the track constructed of concrete instead of asphalt and it is where today's 75-lap race is scheduled to start and finish. Grooves were added to the Sambadrome straightaway overnight to fix the problem.

Franchitti clocked in at a 1 minute, 27.7354 seconds fastest lap speed during the Firestone Fast Six qualifying round that had Alex Tagliani of Canada, second, 0.0322 seconds back, Justin Wilson of England, making his debut for Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, will start third (1:27.8183), 0.0829 behind, American Ryan Hunter-Reay, also competing in his first race for Andretti Autosport, will start fourth (1:27.8756), the Penske of Australian driver Will Power, fifth (1:28.0156), and finishing with Andretti Autosport's Tony Kanaan, sixth (1:28.6946), and he will represent the Brazilian with the best starting spot. Qualifying Results>>

This excerpted and edited from the translated Brazilian website, VOOZ -

Meanwhile, optimum Brazilian was Tony Kanaan, that leaves in the sixth position.

The trainings of classification of the stage of São Paulo must have happened in the afternoon of Saturday, but problems in the straight line of the Sambódromo had postponed the dispute for the morning of this sunday. After the emergenciais repairs in this stretch of the circuit of the Anhembi, the cars had obtained to develop the speed waited in the session that defined grid of jettison, although the constant dust in the track.

For the Brazilian pilots, the trainings of classification were not very good. Tony Kanaan (Andretti) was the only one to dispute the last part of the session, when position was defined pole, but obtained only the sixth place. Excessively they had been being for the way: Helium Castroneves (Penske), Vitor Meira (AJ Foyt) and Raphael Matos (Luczo Dragon) had fallen in the second part, while Bia Figueiredo (Dreyer&Reinbold), Mario Romancini (Conquest) and Mario Moraes (KV) had left soon in the first one.
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Organizers had three months to set up the track following the announcement that the IndyCar Series would be coming to Brazil for the first time since the CART series raced in the Latin American country from 1996 to 2000.

With the running of this race today, Sao Paulo becomes the only city in the world to host both an IndyCar Series and a Formula 1 (GP Brazil de Fórmula 1 to be held November 7th) in 2010.

... notes from The EDJE