CART pleased with Michigan tests

CART reduced turbo boost from 40 to 37 inches this year to cut horsepower and speeds, which reached 241 mph at California Speedway last year and nearly 235 at Michigan. But hard work from Honda, Toyota and Ford-Cosworth has almost completely eliminated the hoped-for power loss, and drivers turned practice laps in the high 236-range prior to the cancelled Texas round.

CART therefore called for an additional cut in boost from 37 to 36 inches and mandated a larger flap on the Handford Device rear wing.

"I spoke with a lot of the guys throughout the day and, by and large, today was a successful day," Kneifel said. "The guys were able to tune the cars with the new wing package, we were able to reduce speeds, and the driveability of the cars appears good. We expect the speeds to increase some by race weekend, but ultimately the speeds should be down from last year."

Gil de Ferran was fastest of the five drivers present at 224.278 mph. That speed was some 10.7 mph slower than Paul Tracy's Michigan pole speed from 2000.

"It's always good to evaluate something before you make it definite and from that standpoint the test was definitely very beneficial," de Ferran said. "The speeds certainly dropped a bit and that was a good thing.

"The car feels lighter to drive," he added. "You can certainly feel the loss of downforce. But we were able to get the car working a little better, and my car is not handling that bad."

Christian Fittipaldi was second fastest on 221.955 mph, followed by Dario Franchitti (220.406), Max Papis (219.740) and Bryan Herta (219.727).