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Power still unbeatable in practice

Will Power completed a clean sweep of fastest practice times with a brilliant last lap in a frenetic end to final practice in St Petersburg

Penske driver Power had dominated Friday's action, leading both sessions and outpacing his rivals by 0.7 seconds in practice two.

The Australian was quickest again for much of this morning's final hour, usurping early pacesetter Scott Dixon (Ganassi).

Dixon waited until the final minute to retaliate and depose Power - but the New Zealander did not stay in front for long as Justin Wilson (Dreyer & Reinbold), Ryan Briscoe (Penske) and EJ Viso (KV) each grabbed the top spot in extraordinarily quick succession on their respective final laps.

Power still had time in hand, though, and with his own last run he improved to 1m02.1206s - beating Viso by 0.2409s.

Briscoe, Wilson and Dixon filled the rest of the top five, ahead of Wilson's team-mate Mike Conway and Andretti Autosport's lead runner Ryan Hunter-Reay.

The session saw plenty of incidents, with myriad drivers visiting the run-off areas and three damaging their cars.

Alex Lloyd caused the first stoppage when he wiped the left rear wheel off his Dale Coyne Dallara at Turn 8 - a crash that happened at the same time as Takuma Sato launched his KV car into the air over the kerbs at the final chicane, in a similar incident to that which sidelined his team-mate Mario Moraes yesterday afternoon.

Newman/Haas/Lanigan faces the toughest job between now and qualifying. Hideki Mutoh had run strongly in the top 10 again initially, but did substantial damage to his Dallara's left hand side when he misjudged Turn 9 and slid into the wall with 12 minutes to go.

Pos  Driver               Team                    Time        Gap
 1.  Will Power           Penske                  1m02.1206s
 2.  EJ Viso              KV                      1m02.3614s  + 0.2409s
 3.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske                  1m02.5244s  + 0.4038s
 4.  Justin Wilson        Dreyer & Reinbold       1m02.5750s  + 0.4544s
 5.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi                 1m02.5923s  + 0.4717s
 6.  Mike Conway          Dreyer & Reinbold       1m02.7342s  + 0.6137s
 7.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti                1m02.7935s  + 0.6730s
 8.  Helio Castroneves    Penske                  1m02.8278s  + 0.7072s
 9.  Marco Andretti       Andretti                1m02.8729s  + 0.7523s
10.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi                 1m02.9230s  + 0.8025s
11.  Tony Kanaan          Andretti                1m03.0324s  + 0.9119s
12.  Mario Romancini      Conquest                1m03.0745s  + 0.9540s
13.  Danica Patrick       Andretti                1m03.1052s  + 0.9847s
14.  Hideki Mutoh         Newman/Haas/Lanigan     1m03.1527s  + 1.0321s
15.  Dan Wheldon          Panther                 1m03.1527s  + 1.0480s
16.  Alex Tagliani        Fazzt                   1m03.1856s  + 1.0651s
17.  Takuma Sato          KV                      1m03.2683s  + 1.1477s
18.  Graham Rahal         Sarah Fisher            1m03.2740s  + 1.1535s
19.  Vitor Meira          Foyt                    1m03.3556s  + 1.2351s
20.  Raphael Matos        de Ferran/Luczo Dragon  1m03.4014s  + 1.2809s
21.  Simona de Silvestro  HVM                     1m03.7916s  + 1.6711s
22.  Mario Moraes         KV                      1m03.8429s  + 1.7223s
23.  Alex Lloyd           Dale Coyne              1m04.6200s  + 2.4995s
24.  Milka Duno           Dale Coyne              1m09.9728s  + 7.8523s

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