» IndyCars: Castroneves ends Barber test quickest

The Penske team has taken a clean sweep of the two-day test at the Barber Motorsport Park, with Hélio Castroneves following on from his team-mate Will Power’s efforts the day before by going quickest overall on the second day’s running.

The Brazilian eased out his team-mate Power by just two-hundredths of a second, while the third Penske of Ryan Briscoe was fourth-quickest.

Splitting the Australian drivers was Scott Dixon, with the Ganassi driver lapping fractionally quicker than Briscoe. The Newman/Haas entry of the currently out-of-contract Oriol Servià was fifth-fastest, with the Catalan doing his chances of securing a full-time drive no harm at all.

The schedule for the second day underwent a minor change after overnight rain, but the day’s two sessions were run in dry conditions, with Power lapping quickest in the morning, while Castroneves – who also had a spin – was fastest in the afternoon.

Former F1 racer Takuma Sato improved on his first day’s efforts to finish sixth-fastest in a specially-liveried car to honour the Japanese earthquake victims, with the KV Racing driver splitting the Newman/Haas entries, finishing one spot faster than James Hinchcliffe.

Marco Andretti also improved to finish eighth-fastest and the quickest of the Andretti Autosports entries, with team-mates Ryan Hunter-Reay (10th), Danica Patrick (13th) and Mike Conway (16th) not too far behind, although Conway ended his day early with a crash.

Dario Franchitti, however, had another off-the-pace day, struggling to get a set-up together and finishing down the order in 11th, almost a second slower than the two leading Penskes.

Barber Motorsport Park Pre-Season Test (Day 1 & 2) Lap Times:

	Driver	Team	Time
1.	Hélio Castroneves	Team Penske	1:11.9434
2.	Will Power	Team Penske	+ 0.0202
3.	Scott Dixon	Target Chip Ganassi	+ 0.3381
4.	Ryan Briscoe	Team Penske	+ 0.3520
5.	Oriol Servià	Newman/Haas Racing	+ 0.4160
6.	Takuma Sato	KV Racing Technology Lotus	+ 0.5308
7.	James Hinchcliffe	Newman/Haas Racing	+ 0.5766
8.	Marco Andretti	Andretti Autosport	+ 0.5821
9.	Justin Wilson	Dreyer & Reinbold Racing	+ 0.7357
10.	Ryan Hunter-Reay	Andretti Autosport	+ 0.8315
11.	Dario Franchitti	Target Chip Ganassi	+ 0.9013
12.	Alex Tagliani	Sam Schmidt Motorsports	+ 0.9099
13.	Danica Patrick	Andretti Autosport	+ 1.0204
14.	Graham Rahal	Service Central Chip Ganassi	+ 1.0370
15.	EJ Viso	KV Racing Technology Lotus	+ 1.0736
16.	Mike Conway	Andretti Autosport	+ 1.0904
17.	Vitor Meira	AJ Foyt Enterprises	+ 1.1717
18.	Simona di Silvestro	HVM Racing	+ 1.3237
19.	Sébastien Bourdais	Dale Coyne Racing	+ 1.3470
20.	Charlie Kimball	Novo Nordisk Chip Ganassi	+ 1.3917
21.	James Jakes	Dale Coyne Racing	+ 1.4889
22.	Sebastian Saavedra	Conquest Racing	+ 1.7069
23.	Ana Beatriz	Dreyer & Reinbold Racing	+ 1.9997
24.	JR Hildebrand	Panther Racing	+ 2.6100