De Ferran and Penske start where they left off

De Ferran coaxed a lap of 1m 18.581s from his Reynard-Honda, at an average speed of 96.390 mph.

The morning practice session was terminated after 30 minutes with de Ferran's Penske team mate Helio Castroneves on top because the new Mexican road course was too slippery for the 800-horsepower Champ Cars. Castroneves' time in the morning session was 28 seconds slower than his afternoon effort of 1m18.916s, which put him third fastest on the day.

"We're pretty happy about the session, but it's only Friday," said de Ferran. "From a personal standpoint, I haven't been in the car for about a month because of my injuries from my crash at Homestead. I feel fine, and I guess I'm more happy about that than being first.

"Helio did a great job testing over the winter when I wasn't able to, and the car is very good," de Ferran added. "All the engineers did a great job over the winter. When you don't have a lot of track time, all the guys back at the office have to do a good job and do their homework, and that they certainly did."

Castroneves emerged from a wheel-banging session with Paul Tracy to take third.

"I think I did everything today that I shouldn't do: spinning and crashing!" said the Brazilian. "But it's a brand new track, and I think we tried to go as fast as we could. I'm sure the track is going to get faster and better, and we're going to keep working hard tomorrow."

Cristiano da Matta split the Penske pair on his debut for Newman-Haas Racing, where he takes over from Michael Andretti. The latter was 12th fastest on his opening day for Team Motorola.

"When I came over to Newman-Haas I had a lot of questions because everyone has been testing during the winter on different days with different track conditions," said da Matta. "We didn't know how we would compare to everybody else. Not that the Friday session means a lot, especially because of the track conditions. But we had a good session, and we definitely learned that we are not in bad shape because we were second."


1 Gil de Ferran, Team Penske, 1m18.581s
2 Cristiano da Matta, Newman/Haas Racing, 1m18.737s
3 Helio Castroneves, Team Penske, 1m18.916s
4 Kenny Brack, Team Rahal, 1m19.148s
5 Patrick Carpentier, Player's/Forsythe Racing, 1m19.390s
6 Bryan Herta, Zakspeed/Forsythe Racing, 1m19.432s
7 Scott Dixon, PacWest Racing Group, 1m19.457s
8 Tony Kanaan, Mo Nunn Racing, 1m19.505s
9 Dario Franchitti, Team Kool Green, 1m19.510s
10 Bruno Junqueira, Target Chip Ganassi Racing, 1m19.648s
11 Shinji Nakano, Fernandez Racing, 1m19.690s
12 Michael Andretti, Team Motorola, 1m19.832s
13 Christian Fittipaldi, Newman/Haas Racing, 1m20.059s
14 Nicolas Minassian, Target Chip Ganassi Racing, 1m20.258s
15 Michel Jourdain Jr, Herdez Bettenhausen, 1m20.431s
16 Roberto Moreno, Patrick Racing, 1m20.753s
17 Paul Tracy, Team KOOL Green, 1m20.767s
18 Mauricio Gugelmin, PacWest Racing Group, 1m20.793s
19 Alex Zanardi, Mo Nunn Racing, 1m21.161s
20 Alex Tagliani, Player's/Forsythe Racing, 1m21.165s
21 Tora Takagi, Walker Racing, 1m21.379s
22 Jimmy Vasser, Patrick Racing, 1m21.585s
23 Michael Krumm, Dale Coyne Racing, 1m21.759s
24 Max Papis, Team Rahal, 1m22.017s
25 Oriol Servia, Sigma Autosport, 1m22.067s
26 Adrian Fernandez, Fernandez Racing, 1m22.302s
27 Luiz Garcia Jr, Dale Coyne Racing, 1m23.302s
28 Tony Kanaan, Mo Nunn Racing, 1m24.396s
29 Max Wilson, Arciero Brooke Racing, 1m25.751s