De Ferran admits “I’m not 100 per cent”

The 33-year-old Brazilian suffered shunts at both Phoenix and Homestead ovals, the latter crash caused by a tyre which threw a tread. Although X-rays proved he had no fractures, severe bruising to his ribs have caused him discomfort when he gets back into a race car.

De Ferran did little running in the IRL Test in the West last week in comparison to Team Penske team mate Helio Castroneves. He has pulled out of today's (Friday) International Race of Champions at Daytona, and didn't manage to test for a full day in the big Champ Car session at Laguna Seca on Tuesday in his Reynard-Honda.

"Laguna Seca is a very physically demanding track, especially the corkscrew, and I'm still not 100 per cent physically, so we decided to only run a partial day" he said. "Right now I'm just going to try to take it easy and get some rest. My ribs are still sore from my last two incidents, so we all agreed it was best to give myself some more time to heal. We were able to get in some track time and continue our testing programme, so I was fairly happy with the results."

The series-opener, at Monterrey in Mexico, is now less than a month away.