Panther Racing Milwaukee Mile Friday Report

The Milwaukee Mile

Hildebrand Finishes 20th in Limited Practice Time at Milwaukee
Electrical Gremlin Costs National Guard Panther Racing Team Valuable Track Tim on Friday

An electrical gremlin caused the National Guard Panther Racing team to sit andwatch IZOD IndyCar Series practice for over an hour Friday at the MilwaukeeMile, but driver JR Hildebrand hopped into the seat and quickly posted the 20th overall time on the day in a limited number of laps.

J.R. Hildebrand, Panther Racing

Photo by: Michael C. Johnson

In just 30 laps on the challenging one-mile oval, Hildebrand posted a quick time of 22.4248 second, which is an average lap speed of 162.945 mph. Team Penske driver Will Power was quickest on the daywith a top speed of 167.648 mph and was followed on the speed chart by fellow IZOD IndyCar Series championship contender Dario Franchitti, who was second-quick with a top lap speed of 167.462 mph.

There will be two more practice sessions tomorrow in addition to qualifications that will set the grid for Sunday’s 225-lap event.

JR Hildebrand, No. 4 National Guard Dallara Honda:
“The National Guard guys worked really hard to just to get the car back out on the racetrack. So it was good to be able to get back out on track and we had a pretty decent first run and then decided to cut our losses with the lack of time on track and just go out and do some heavy fuel runs. Our time isn’t very representative of how quick we can go although we felt OK about it considering we didn’t run at all. We’ll take what we did today and compare it to what we did at the test and try to make it a little bit better for tomorrow.”