Teams begin Daytona test

Vitor Meira buzzed around the Daytona road course shortly after 10 a.m. Tuesday, marking the first time Indy-style race cars had been on the famous stock-car track since its first year, 1959, when two drivers were killed and the track was deemed unfit for open-wheel cars.

At the time, Indy-car drivers struggled with Daytona's 31-degree banking. George Amick and Marshall Teague were killed in separate incidents, and a planned July 4 race was scrapped and replaced by a NASCAR race that later became an annual tradition.

On Tuesday, the first day of a two-day test in which four IRL cars circled a 10-turn, 2.73-mile version of the road course, drivers had few issues with the portions of the circuit involving the high-banked turns of the oval. Instead, they seemed more impressed by the implication of the laps than their difficulty.

"It's a pleasure to be a part of motorsports history," Meira said. "It was very, very cool to be the first car out. It's the most banking I've ever felt, which was a very different feeling. It was good to be first, but we didn't really plan it that way."

The test served two primary purposes. First, IRL officials are interested in racing at Daytona, and this test session is expected to lead to another full-field test at Daytona early next year.

"Ultimately I don't think we want to be looking at a facility just as a test facility," IRL president and COO Brian Barnhart said. "Your ultimate goal would be to race here, but we're a long way from that. If things work out well here, then we'll look at adding it as a pre-season test in the spring. We're still a long way from a race."

Second, two of the drivers on the track - Sam Hornish Jr. and Tony Kanaan - were testing Honda's new 3.5-liter engine, which will be used next season. The increase in displacement from 3.0 liters to 3.5 is being made to accommodate the IRL's switch to 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol for the 2007 season.

"It's running great," Kanaan said. "We did a bunch of laps, and it ran perfectly. We've got a few things to straighten out mapping-wise, but so far it feels great."

While official timing data wasn't released, drivers reported top speeds approaching 200 mph on the exit of Turn 4. Teams practiced for two hours Tuesday morning and ran again in the afternoon.

They'll do it again Wednesday, with Dan Wheldon replacing Scott Dixon in the Target Chip Ganassi lineup.

"A lot of people have asked me if I ever thought I would drive an IndyCar at Daytona," said Sam Hornish Jr., who won the IRL championship earlier this month in the season finale at Chicagoland Speedway.

"I would have probably said no. To be able to run an IndyCar here is a pretty neat experience. It seems pretty fast so far."

The immediate significance of Tuesday's test is the possibility that the IRL might make Daytona a permanent pre-season test site. The rumored date - sometime after the Rolex 24 on Jan. 27-28 and before NASCAR Nextel Cup teams begin preparation for the Budweiser Shootout on Feb. 10 - could present logistical problems for the speedway.

"When we go from the Rolex to the 500, we have a lot of work to do," said Robin Braig, president of Daytona International Speedway. "We have to re-route power and fix fencing and move showers. But we'll look at holes in our schedule and see what might fit. We're very much interested in hosting them for a spring test."

Aside from the large contingent of reporters and photographers at Tuesday's event - unusual for an IRL test session - the historic event also drew a smattering of paying customers. Fans walked through the infield and watched the four drivers -- Meira, Hornish, Kanaan and Dixon -- in the first IndyCar laps at Daytona in more than 47 years.

"We haven't had any calls from the neighbors yet," Braig joked. "That was my first concern, that I might get some calls from Pelican Bay or Indigo Lakes. Our neighbors put up with the noise from the Richard Petty Driving School, but this doesn't sound anything like the Richard Petty Driving School."

When asked if he felt as if IndyCars might be trampling on hallowed ground, Kanaan said he felt perfectly comfortable at NASCAR's showcase facility.

"I forgot my hard card this morning, but the guy at the gate recognized me and let me in," Kanaan said. "I feel right at home. I've never seen so many reporters on a test day in my life. It feels like a race to me."