IRL: St. Pete: FR, Sharp Friday report

Sharp 12th Quickest in Opening Practice at St. Petersburg

Scott Sharp claimed the 12th fastest time of the day in opening practice for the first non-oval event in IRL IndyCar® Series history -- the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. Sharp, who last drove an open-wheel car on a street/road course ten years ago, set the sixth fastest time in the first practice -- a two-hour session open to all competitors. He continued to adapt to "turning right" in the final 30-minute afternoon session and was able to improve his lap by half-a-second, but it was not enough to move significantly up the time charts.

Marlboro Pole Award qualifying featuring the Firestone "Fast Six" will be held tomorrow on the 14-turn, 1.8-mile temporary street circuit.

Scott Sharp, #8 Delphi Panoz/Honda/Firestone:

"It was a good day for the Delphi Fernandez team. It has been about 10 years since I have driven an IndyCar on a road course at an event other than the couple of test days we did, so it is finally starting to come back and it feels good. I have always enjoyed streets circuits. We had a good opening session, and then we made some changes to try a few different things and maybe just didn't hit it quite the way we wanted. Still, we are making progress and we are really in the game here and looking for a strong finish.

"I really like the track. I heard everyone really raved about it at the previous race here. Street circuits are notoriously a lot of 90-degree corners. This one has some of those but it also has some fast sweepers and tight hairpin corners -- it has a lot of variety. As always on street circuits, I think strategy and pit strategy will be important. There are some passing zones and some pretty hard braking spots. I think it will be a real action-packed race."

-fr-