Newman/Haas Racing
Sao Paulo Indy 300 – Sao Paulo, Brazil
Saturday, March 13, 2010

FORMULA DREAM/PANASONIC DRIVER HIDEKI MUTOH 20TH IN PRACTICE FOR THE SAO PAULO INDY 300; QUALIFYING POSTPONED TO ALLOW SERIES OFFICIALS TO GRIND TRACK SURFACE

FASTEST: Will Power 1:31.2980 99.998 mph
20th: Hideki Mutoh 1:33.1872 97.971 mph

OVERALL: Qualifying was postponed until Sunday morning to allow series officials to grind the slick track surface to provide traction for the drivers. An additional one-hour practice session replaced Saturday’s qualifying and a 15-minute warm-up will take place at 8 a.m. on Sunday before qualifying at 8:30. All times are local and subject to change. In total there were three practice sessions today. At the end of the second practice, Mutoh made contact with the wall in Turn 3 and sustained right front wing damage and bent the front and rear toe link.

Hideki Mutoh, No. 06 Formula Dream/Panasonic Dallara/Honda/Firestone: “The track is quite amazing especially the length of the back straight. It’s very bumpy; the bumpiest track I have been on. There is very low grip so it’s hard to find the limit of the car. It was hard work today. But I think we can overtake during the race so it will be a good one to watch.

(On contact:) “I’m not sure what happened; the car just went straight suddenly. We couldn’t find anything on the data that was strange but my engineer Martin (Pare) was watching on the TV and said he thought it looked strange too. Maybe something broke but we couldn’t find anything. Fortunately it wasn’t a big amount of damage and we were ready to run in the next practice session. I want to thank my guys for fixing it.

“I was happy with the extra track time. We weren’t able to try new things on the car in the last session because I crashed before that and we needed to repair the car instead of make all of the changes we wanted. Now we will take the time to change the car overnight. The promoters are going to grind the straight and that will make it a whole different story tomorrow. We’ll see what impact it has. That was the area that I was struggling with most today so hopefully it will help us.

(On the race:) “I think the race is going to be a little crazy and I hope I am not part of that. There are a lot of rookies in the race so it will be interesting. Because of the very long straight, there is a chance to overtake. The hairpin is quite tight though so I think there is going to be a lot happening there. If it rains I think you can aquaplane on the back straight because it is so bumpy. It will be a survival race if it rains. It might be either way.”

FAST FACTS: Will be his first race here and first race with the team after having driven for Andretti Green Racing, co-owned by former NHR driver Michael Andretti, for the past two seasons…His highest IZOD IndyCar Series start on a road/street course is FIFTH at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma in 2009 and best series road/street course finish is FIFTH at Mid-Ohio and Infineon (both 2009)…His highest overall series start is THIRD at Nashville Speedway (oval) and best overall series finish is SECOND (Iowa 2008).

NHR IN BRAZIL: This will be the sixth race for the team in Brazil. The team competed in the CART events in Rio de Janeiro from 1996-2000 with drivers Michael Andretti and Christian Fittipaldi. The best start for the team in Brazil was by Fittipaldi who earned his first CART pole in his homeland in 1999 and the team’s best finish in Brazil is third, also by Fittipaldi in 1999…ON ROAD/STREET COURSES: NHR / NHR earned 80 of their 107 wins and 90 of their 109 poles on road/street courses.

TUNE IN: The 2010 Izod IndyCar Series season-opener will be televised live on Versus at 11:30 a.m. ET Sunday. Live timing & scoring and streaming video can be seen free of charge on www.indycar.com.