The hope of running three days’ worth of testing in Portland this week for the RSPORTS team was washed away, however the team was able to run both drivers Alex Tagliani and Justin Wilson and accomplish a good majority of their goals during their outing.
Tuesday marked the first day of the testing effort at Portland International Raceway. Only Tagliani ran this day pushing the #8 LXN2 Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone to its limit on a road course. The French-Canadian continued working on improving the team’s road course setup and preparing for the Portland race. The team continued working towards understanding the DP01 and what changes improve the car. At the end of the day, Tagliani sat third on the lap sheet after turning a lap time of 58.18 seconds around the 1.960-mile permanent road course.
“Obviously there are two different types of race car setups between the street courses and road courses, ” said Tagliani. “Coming here after Houston, you notice that you can really fine-tune the setup on the DP01 and sense details in the new car that you couldn’t feel when you’re going over the bumps or the surface changes on street courses. It’s good to get some testing here because we have a stretch of road courses coming up that are going to play a large part of the championship.
I think that the test went pretty good for RSPORTS. On Tuesday we had a good day as we found some things that will definitely help us when we come back to Portland for the race. I had a P3 car then, so things started off positive and we were rather quick. I was quite pleased with how the #8 LXN2/RSPORTS car was feeling. Overall, I am very happy with what we accomplished this week and I am excited to get back here to race in June. ”
Tagliani’s teammate Wilsondid not run on Tuesday, but was scheduled to run on Wednesday and Thursday in the #9 CDW Cosworth/DP01/Bridgestone. However, that plan was put on hold as the Portland area saw heavy rain throughout the day on Wednesday, delaying the team because they wanted to make the most out of their test by running on a dry track. So there was no RSPORTS activity on Wednesday and they hoped for clear weather for Thursday, their final day at PIR.
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