INDYCAR: Rookies off pace, frustrated at Barber

"Honestly, I think that is the worst Friday I have ever had in my racing career," Rossi said. "I don't think I've ever experienced such a big deficit in pace. We have to either go home or start from scratch tomorrow, and I don't want to go home."

The American might have been unhappy with how the opening day of practice went for the Verizon IndyCar Series on its first permanent road course of the season, but he wasn't far behind the other two rookies in the field. Chip Ganassi Racing's Max Chilton was the best among the rookies in 18th, Dale Coyne Racing's Conor Daly was 19th, and both expressed similar opinions to Rossi.

"We spent the morning session working on the Gallagher car and really just tried to get it to my liking," Chilton said of his Chevy-powered car. "It's kind of floating around there underneath me so we have some work to do. This is one of the few tracks I was able to test at in the preseason and I know my teammates have gotten some good results here, especially Scott [Dixon]. I hope we can learn from today and move forward to get the car going in the right direction for tomorrow."

Daly echoed Chilton's sentiments.

"I think we knew this place would be a challenge for us," said the Honda-powered Hoosier. "There's a lot here at Barber Motorsports Park that is really technical and it really focuses on the mechanical side of the set up. We just have to keep working on what we're doing. We're evaluating things that we need to evaluate on our Jonathan Byrd's Hospitality car and hopefully we can put a few things together overnight for tomorrow. It's just a work in progress, basically."

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