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During this week's busy testing activities at Firebird Raceway,Fernandez ran a 42.9 lap on the 1.5 mile course CART teams prefer for their road course dry weather testing.Pruett ran a 42.3, Herta (for the first time on Firestone, but most likely still in a '97 car) clocks a 42.8.
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| Adrian Fernandez in the '98 colors of his Patrick Racing Reynard Ford. The car looks almost identical to the '97 Reynards |
Meanwhile, Andre Ribeiro pushes the new Penske to about 43.2 (hand timed and thus unreliable).Roberto Moreno was lapping the track in the Alumax car at 43.6 seconds. People present at thesite mentioned that the track was rather loose with significant rubber build-up (Goodyear hadbeen testing for 6 days with multiple teams participating.
During one of the sessions we did get another look at the new Penske nose. The image below shows how Penske managed to 'raise the nose' while actually keeping some carbon fiber low enoughto comply with CART chassis rules.
Our sources also saw the AAR car lapping - the driver wore a helmet in the colors of Castrol. We assume this may have been the driver Dan Gurney is to announce next Tuesdayas the replacement for the retired Juan Fangio II.
Next week several teams are expected to move to Laguna Seca for a 3 day test. We expect to have a reporter on site to report whatever transpires at Monterey.