Cheever expects gruelling race

Cheever qualified 16th for Sunday's race and the former Formula 1 driver believes the fact that the track is new to the entire field could cause some surprises.

"The event tomorrow is going to be a survivor's race," said Cheever. "The wind, the small amount of banking, and the fact that nobody has raced here - there are just so many unknowns. I could have the best engineers in NASA here analysing my data and they'd still have to make assumptions about what the car, the track, and what the drivers are going to do. That's the problem when you don't have any history at a track: you're counting on assumptions."

Despite the lack of pace this weekend, Cheever feels certain that he can improve as the 13-race season progresses.

"I think fuel efficiency is going to be very important in the race tomorrow," he said, "and we've made big gains on fuel efficiency with the new Infiniti engine since Phoenix. This is only the second race for the engine, so we're learning as we go. I'm confident that it's going to be a very good year for us."