A late downpour washed out early evening qualifications at Richmond International Raceway on Friday evening in preparation for the SunTrust Indy Challenge presented by XM Satellite Radio. The starting field for Saturday night’s race will instead be determined by the IndyCar Series driver points standings. Buddy Rice is currently 12th in the point standings with 150 points while teammate Sarah Fisher is 16th in the standings with 142 points.
“We feel like our race cars are pretty good and we are looking forward to the race tomorrow, ” said team co-owner, Dennis Reinbold.
Rice turned 119 laps during afternoon practice sessions under cloudy skies good enough for 15th on the speed charts with times reaching 169.235 miles per hour.
“I think it’s a bummer that it got rained out, ” said 2004 Indianapolis 500 Winner, Buddy Rice, who qualified second at Richmond International Raceway in 2004. “I think we were going to qualify pretty decent. We have a really solid race car. We worked a lot on our race package today so I think tomorrow night will be a good deal. We’ll have to see what happens with this weather. Obviously this is going to change everything with the rain. ”
Fisher wheeled 114 laps during practice and clocked in at 18th with a speed of 166.761 mph.
“After a day of running we are disappointed that qualifying was rained out, ” said Fisher, who qualified on the front row two out of her three visits to the track. “We have a better car than what we will start with the points. We are still learning about the car and working with the tires; we’re just trying to make it all work. ”
Dario Franchitti will start from the pole position as he is the current IndyCar Series points leader with 306 points; second place is teammate Tony Kanaan with 255 points who will join him on the front row.
It’s hard to imagine the IndyCar Series on a smaller oval than Iowa’s. 875-mile but come Saturday evening, the 19 drivers will circle round the. 75-mile d-shaped oval in hopes of taking home the checkered flag under the lights at Richmond International raceway. Although the total distance is the shortest raced all season, the drivers will be pulling more than five g’s through every turn, leaving them five to seven pounds lighter by race’s end due to the extra stain on their bodies. Further, the RIR contains no straight-aways, parting the drivers with a constant 16-second cycle of turning left nearly 250 times over 1.5 hours. At Richmond, horsepower becomes secondary to a well-handling race car.
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