Cart Toyota Atlantic Drivers took to Chicago Motor Speedway’s one-mile oval track once again today to run two practice sessions. Drivers spent significantly less time on the track (two practice sessions totalling 70 minutes), as compared to yesterday (two test sessions totalling 4 hours). Good news for Atlantic teams and racers, who took full advantage of the additional sessions, to further configure and tweak their cars to achieve optimum performance.
Jonathan Macri, hailing from Gormley, Ontario, was not too impressed with his results today, lapping at speeds of 132.324 miles/hr., and at a time of 27.995, nine miles/hr. slower and .839 seconds behind race-leader Hoover Orsi, who managed speeds of 136.367 and ran a time of 27.156 seconds. This relegated Jonathan to 11th place in the practice session, slipping 3 positions from his 8th place standing at yesterday’s test sessions.
“We ran pretty well at this morning’s practice session, 5th overall. We tried to better our position in the afternoon practice, so we re-set the car and made some pretty significant changes. When it came to the afternoon practice, my car was just not there. It had some real under steer when I reached higher speeds. I’m not sure what the problem is. Either the set-up was right off, in which case we need to start from ground zero and re-set the car, or the change in the track, seeing that we ran right after the Cart practice, which left a lot of rubber, was really the problem. I am not sure, but I think we are probably going to have to re-set the car and hope that we get it right for tomorrow,” Jonathan said.
Jonathan and his NTN racing team have the chance to test their car at tomorrow’s 8 am practice session, the last practice session before qualifying tomorrow afternoon.
Stephan Roy and Tony Ave finished second and third, respectively, with Stephan only .009 seconds off the leader’s pace.
The race, the 7th of the 12-race Atlantic season and the last race on an oval, takes place Sunday.
Report by Fedele Fortino
|
 |