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Castroneves fastest on day two

Helio Castroneves edged out his Penske team-mate Will Power to set the fastest time on the final day of IndyCar Series testing at Barber Motorsports Park on Tuesday

The schedule was slightly reorganised after overnight rain, with both sessions ultimately taking place on a dry track and both seeing a Penske driver on top. Power led the way with a 1m11.9636s in the morning before Castroneves beat that with a 1m11.9434s later on.

The Brazilian had a spin through the gravel during the test, but kept his car out of the barriers.

"I was expecting something different from the car because it kept changing throughout the day based on the track," said Castroneves. "I was expecting the car was going to push but it went the opposite way. The good news is that nothing was damaged."

Penske's third driver Ryan Briscoe was fourth on combined times, with Ganassi's Scott Dixon denying Penske a top-three sweep by grabbing third - though his champion team-mate Dario Franchitti struggled to get a set-up he was happy with and was only 11th.

Newman/Haas' spectacular test continued as Oriol Servia and James Hinchcliffe took fifth and seventh on the final timesheets, having held a one-two for a while. They were split by KV's Takuma Sato, the Japanese driver running 'Pray for Japan' logos on his car as the tragic events in his homeland dominated his thoughts.

Marco Andretti ended up as top Andretti Autosport driver in eighth, with his next-best team-mate Ryan Hunter-Reay in 10th.

They were split on combined times by Justin Wilson, but the Dreyer & Reinbold driver had to rely on his Monday lap to earn that position having been disappointed with the car's pace on new tyres on Tuesday.

After his strong Monday performance, it was a disappointing Tuesday for Mike Conway - the Andretti driver ending his day with an early crash.

"I was braking into Turns 14 and 15; the rear got very, very loose," he explained. "I corrected it once, corrected it twice, but the second time the rear just kissed the grass and that was it. With the wet grass, it just went straight off."

Panther's JR Hildebrand missed the second day of testing following his crash at the end of Monday's test, with the team deciding to take the car back to its base for repairs.

Combined testing times:

Pos  Driver               Team               Time        Gap
 1.  Helio Castroneves    Penske             1m11.9434s
 2.  Will Power           Penske             1m11.9636s  + 0.0202s
 3.  Scott Dixon          Ganassi            1m12.2815s  + 0.3381s
 4.  Ryan Briscoe         Penske             1m12.2954s  + 0.3520s
 5.  Oriol Servia         Newman/Haas        1m12.3594s  + 0.4160s
 6.  Takuma Sato          KV                 1m12.4742s  + 0.5308s
 7.  James Hinchcliffe    Newman/Haas        1m12.5200s  + 0.5766s
 8.  Marco Andretti       Andretti           1m12.5255s  + 0.5821s
 9.  Justin Wilson        Dreyer & Reinbold  1m12.6791s  + 0.7357s
10.  Ryan Hunter-Reay     Andretti           1m12.7749s  + 0.8315s
11.  Dario Franchitti     Ganassi            1m12.8447s  + 0.9013s
12.  Alex Tagliani        Schmidt            1m12.8533s  + 0.9099s
13.  Danica Patrick       Andretti           1m12.9638s  + 1.0204s
14.  Graham Rahal         Ganassi            1m12.9804s  + 1.0370s
15.  EJ Viso              KV                 1m13.0170s  + 1.0736s
16.  Mike Conway          Andretti           1m13.0338s  + 1.0904s
17.  Vitor Meira          Foyt               1m13.1151s  + 1.1717s
18.  Simona de Silvestro  HVM                1m13.2671s  + 1.3237s
19.  Sebastien Bourdais   Coyne              1m13.2904s  + 1.3470s
20.  Charlie Kimball      Ganassi            1m13.3351s  + 1.3917s
21.  James Jakes          Coyne              1m13.4323s  + 1.4889s
22.  Sebastian Saavedra   Conquest           1m13.6503s  + 1.7069s
23.  Ana Beatriz          Dreyer & Reinbold  1m13.9431s  + 1.9997s
24.  JR Hildebrand        Panther            1m14.5534s  + 2.6100s

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