Junqueira shock fastest in Nazareth practice

Junqueira forced his Lola-Toyota around the tricky 0.947-mile Nazareth tri-oval in 20.485 seconds, for an average speed of 166.248mph. A revised aerodynamic package has slowed lap times by about 0.8 second from a year ago, and Junqueira's time was a full 2 seconds slower than Patrick Carpentier's track record.

"We tested here twice, and that helped me a lot," said Junqueira, last year's FIA Formula 3000 champion. "I'm very happy that we had no problems and that I was able to get a good lap time. This is a tough oval to learn, because you have to brake and downshift and there are three completely different corners. You're turning all the time, and I thought the walls were chasing me at first."

Team Penske's Helio Castroneves was second fastest after generally focusing on longer runs.

"It felt like tropical weather today," remarked Castroneves about the unseasonable 95-degree heat. "I was happy with the set-up of the car right out of the box. We're running less downforce this year, and it actually feels a lot like the cars did in 1999. There's a lot of turbulence in traffic, but the weather is supposed to be cooler for the rest of the weekend and that will increase the downforce."

Team Rahal's Max Papis was fastest in the afternoon session.

"This is our first short oval with the Lola chassis," said the Italian. "We're still learning a lot about the car, and it had a lot of adjustments that are different than the Reynard we have been running. We focused on long runs, and right at the end, I did quite a good lap time.

"I only did two days of oval testing, but we kicked everyone's ass at Phoenix," Papis added.

Papis' team mate Kenny Brack was fourth fastest, ahead of the surprising Michel Jourdain Jr. Penske's Gil de Ferran, Paul Tracy, Oriol Servia, Cristiano da Matta and Bryan Herta rounded out the top 10 as Ford-Cosworth powered five of the top 10 cars.