Richmond practice: Boat floats to top

Boat, driving a Dallara-Aurora, set a lap of 161.181 miles per hour around the three-quarter mile tri-oval in the second practice.

"We didn't get a chance to test here, so we've got a lot to learn," he said. "We feel pretty good about our speed so far in comparison to everybody else, but everybody is going to get better, and the track is going to be a lot faster. We still need to work on the balance of the car and carry our momentum through the corners.

"The track has a few bumps you have to work around. We still have a ways to go, but we feel good right now."

Sam Hornish Jr, who leads the IRL standings by 56 points over Eliseo Salazar, was second quick at 160.852 mph in a Dallara-Aurora.

"The car's running pretty good, but we're not where we want to be yet," he said. "We're still working on our set-up, but things are going to change a lot when the track cools down. We are just trying not to fool ourselves by switching the car around so much that we're worse off from where we started.

"Most of time we tested, it was dark out or getting dark," he added. "Right now, we're running pretty much in the heat of the day and the track is starting to slicken up. We're at a track that has such a dark coat of blacktop on it that it heats up really fast. Things will change a lot between today and tonight."

Eddie Cheever was third quickest at 160.805 mph in a Cheever Racing Dallara-Infiniti.

"The engine we tested with here in April was a different spec than this one," said the former Formula 1 driver. "This one has more bottom end and I'm happier coming off the corners. At the end of the second session, we ran with full tanks to get a head start on Saturday."

Qualifying takes place on Friday, with the race scheduled for Saturday night.