Power leads KV one-two in practice

The Australian posted a best time of 1:02.3404 to edge teammate Oriol Servia by a scant 0.0496 seconds, while Team Penske's Helio Castroneves was another 0.1465 seconds adrift in third spot.

"It was obviously a good day to used to the set-up of an Indy car," said Power who, like Servia, raced at the Edmonton City Centre Airport circuit in the Champ Car World Series. "It's much different than a Champ Car. The team's done a great job and we arrived with a reasonable set-up."

Servia credited the familiarity of the team and their drivers with the Edmonton circuit for the speed shown by KVRT, but cautioned about complacency.

"Coming here to a place we know, it feels good to be on top of the timesheets," he said. "But we need to keep pushing. The other guys are only on their first day here, and they're big teams with good drivers. I'm pretty sure they're going to be pushing pretty hard tomorrow.

Castroneves concurred with Servia.

"Our main goal today was to find out what the Team Penske car can do on this circuit," he said. "Now that we know, we'll used tomorrow to see how much we can push that limit. Overall, I think we had a good day."

The fact that Penske teammate Ryan Briscoe finished up fourth fastest ahead of former Edmonton Champ Car winner Justin Wilson (Newman/Haas/Lanigan) would seem to substantiate Castroneves' verdict about the team's first day at Edmonton.

Another driver who had a pretty good day was Paul Tracy. Driving in a third Vision Racing car prepared by Derrick Walker Racing in what, for now, is a one-off effort, the Canadian was credited with the eighth fastest time of the day despite never having turned a wheel in a Dallara-Honda IndyCar before the morning - when he was allotted a fifteen minutes shake-down test.

"It went as well as you could hope for," he said. "We hoped to come in and have the car run well and and we did that. Derrick Walker and his group did a great job. I haven't driven since Long Beach. Hopefully things will come back a little easier tomorrow and we can work on race set-up. But it's going to be tough. These guys have been driving all year."

The day went considerably less well for EJ Viso and Bruno Junqueira. Viso spun and backed into the Turn 1 wall in the first practice session, damaging the HVM Racing Dallara-Honda's gearbox. Although the team had a spare gearbox on hand, it was set up for an oval test planned next week and could not be changed-over in time for the second practice. The team expect to have their car ready for Viso for Friday's practice and qualifying.

Similarly, Junqueira spun across a kerb and damaged the tub of his Dale Coyne Racing entry in the second practice and did not return to action. However, the team will have their spare car ready for Friday.

Pos  Driver             Team                 Time
 1.  Will Power         KV                   1:02.3404
 2.  Oriol Servia       KV                   1:02.3900  + 0.0496
 3.  Helio Castroneves  Penske               1:02.5365  + 0.1961
 4.  Ryan Briscoe       Penske               1:02.5831  + 0.2427
 5.  Justin Wilson      Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:02.6220  + 0.2816
 6.  Scott Dixon        Ganassi              1:02.6685  + 0.3281
 7.  Tony Kanaan        Andretti Green       1:02.6806  + 0.3402
 8.  Paul Tracy         Vision               1:02.6933  + 0.3529
 9.  Graham Rahal       Newman/Haas/Lanigan  1:02.7528  + 0.4124
10.  Bruno Junqueira    Dale Coyne           1:02.8760  + 0.5356
11.  Dan Wheldon        Ganassi              1:02.8800  + 0.5396
12.  Ryan Hunter-Reay   Rahal Letterman      1:02.9395  + 0.5991
13.  Mario Moraes       Dale Coyne           1:03.2586  + 0.9182
14.  Hideki Mutoh       Andretti Green       1:03.4577  + 1.1173
15.  Marco Andretti     Andretti Green       1:03.4684  + 1.1280
16.  Mario Dominguez    Pacific Coast        1:03.5862  + 1.2458
17.  Vitor Meira        Panther              1:03.8570  + 1.5166
18.  Ed Carpenter       Vision               1:03.9548  + 1.6144
19.  Darren Manning     Foyt                 1:03.9866  + 1.6462
20.  AJ Foyt IV         Vision               1:04.1350  + 1.7946
21.  Buddy Rice         Dreyer & Reinbold    1:04.1646  + 1.8242
22.  Enrique Bernoldi   Conquest             1:04.2360  + 1.8956
23.  Danica Patrick     Andretti Green       1:04.3010  + 1.9606
24.  Jaime Camara       Conquest             1:04.8655  + 2.5251
25.  Townsend Bell      Dreyer & Reinbold    1:04.9073  + 2.5669
26.  EJ Viso            HVM                  1:05.4394  + 3.0990
27.  Marty Roth         Roth                 1:07.2098  + 4.8694