Broken Suspension Leaves DRR In 10th With Rice And 15th With Fisher At St. Pete

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The Streets of St. Petersburg proved to be long and hot as Dreyer & Reinbold Racing drivers, Buddy Rice and Sarah Fisher, turned left and right to the finish of the 100 lap Honda Indy Grand Prix. After determining Rice has broken his suspension and a miscalculation on fuel, Rice was forced to pit on the final lap of the race and give up his eighth place to finish 10th while teammate Fisher put her first road course behind her bringing the car home in the 15th position.

Rice and Fisher’s day began in the 13th and 18th position but were quick to move up as the yellow flag flew on lap 1 as Kosuke Matsuura spun in Turn 4. Fisher stopped through pit lane twice for splashes of fuel while sitting in 9th (Rice) and 13th (Fisher) on the grid.

Yellow flags continue to fly as both cars pitted again on lap 33 though Rice lost two positions which found him in 11th place when the course went back to green. By lap 39, Rice was back in eighth and by lap 44, Rice was radioing to the crew that something was wrong with his car. He stated, “My steering is really heavy and it’s pushing really hard. ” He continued to hang on while moving up the field to seventh place, his highest position of the day.

For Fisher, she spent the day learning what it was like to compete on a road course, as it was her first time competing on a street course. She managed to stay out of trouble until lap 73. Safety crew official were crossing the track causing her to lock up the breaks and overshoot Turn 4; the Delphi Safety Crew got her back on course to finish the race.

“The race started off really good for us, ” said Rice, who was seventh quick during the final morning practice session. “The qualifying wasn’t that good but the warm up this morning was really good. We had a problem with the car early on in the race and we weren’t sure what it was. We found out at the end of the race that we broke the upper wish bone in the right front corner. So basically, we ran most of the race with that. I guess for us to finish where we did was pretty good. We got some decent points. But we’ll move on from here and get ready for Motegi. ”

“I learned a lot today on the road course, ” said Fisher. “I’m on a big learning curve but I’ve been making progress. It was really refreshing to talk to some of the other drivers during driver intros and hear of their stories when they were rookies on the road course. One step at a time; we’ll get there. ”

“With Buddy we are really disappointed with a 10th place finish today, ” said team co-owner Dennis Reinbold, whose team has a previous best finish on a road course of third. “We had a lot better car than that and running much higher than that. It makes sense now that we found out we had been running all day with a broken suspension. Buddy did a really great job continuing to drive it and put some fast laps down. Under those circumstances, we have to be happy with 10th place. With Sarah, she also did a great job. All day long she kept chipping way and getting better and better. For her this was more of a test than a race even though it is a race weekend. You can’t learn just going off on our own in a test. We are really happy with her progress and the league officials stated that they thought she was getting better and better. We expect great things from her on the track this season. ”


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