Penske's oval concern

Castroneves was a strong fourth quickest in the road course portion of the test, but both he and Hornish were relegated by a phalanx of Honda-powered cars once the action switched to the 1.5-mile oval with its 'progressive banking', where horsepower is the key requirement.

While Honda swept the top six positions, Toyota's top representative was Castroneves in 10th place of the 20 cars present, two spots ahead of Hornish. To rub salt into the wounds, the Toyota contingent was also upstaged by Chevrolet's Tomas Sheckter, who posted the seventh best time.

"The Marlboro car was good on the road course, but we still have a lot of work to do on the ovals," acknowledged Castroneves. "Hopefully when we return to Homestead in March [for the season-opener] we'll be in as good a shape as we were in last year's race [in which Hornish led a Penske 1-2]."

Hornish echoed his Brazilian team-mate's comments: "It was good to be able to get out on the track and see how we stack up against the other teams. We definitely have some work left to prepare for the year, and I also don't feel I'm quite at the pinnacle of what I can do."

"Obviously, we have our work cut out for us as the competition gets better every year," conceded Penske Racing president Tim Cindric.

Homestead's medium/high banked, full-throttle 1.5-mile layout (recently reprofiled at the behest of NASCAR) is probably the most typical configuration on the IndyCar schedule, so Penske's performance deficit there will be a cause for concern at its Reading, Pennsylvania factory. Meanwhile the team hopes it will fare better in short oval trim during the final pre-season open test at Phoenix on February 9-10.