IndyCar St. Pete Friday notebook

EXTENDED STAY

Chevrolet and Honda wouldn't announce the length of their contract extensions during Friday's press conference but the fact they're staying in the Verizon IndyCar series was newsworthy nonetheless.

"Our contract expired at end of this season," said Mark Kent, the director of motorsport competition for Chevrolet and Cadillac.

"We announced a two-year extension in 2015 with a three-year option and we exercised our option," said Art St. Cyr, the president of Honda Performance Development.

This is big news for IndyCar because these two manufacturers drive the competition, sponsor races and promote the series. Losing one of them would have been a serious blow.

"A lot of people do ask why we compete in IndyCar and there's a lot of reasons," said Kent. whose engine/aero package combination has dominated the series the past two years. "On track it gives us the ability to continue to develop technologies that we use in a lot of our production cars. Talk about small displacement, turbocharging, direct injection – all great stuff we do in our production cars. This arena gives us an opportunity to build better street cars from what we learn on the racetrack.

"It always gives us a great opportunity at the racetrack to display a lot of our products and get our products in front of current and prospective customers to let them see what great cars Chevrolet truly makes and hopefully get them to put Chevrolet on their shopping list.

"Finally, just the opportunity to run at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is a great value for us to compete in the sport."

Honda came to CART in 1994, took its licks and then reigned over the series for six consecutive seasons before moving to the IRL, where it buried Toyota and then became the sole supplier for six years prior to Chevy joining the competition in 2012.

"HPD was started in 1993 mainly to support open-wheel racing in North America," said St. Cyr (pictured, middle). "We have been in open-wheel racing in its various forms for 24 years consistently. We do that because we believe in the purity of what open-wheel racing represents in North America.

"Our parent company, American Honda, believes in what open-wheel racing represents for our brand. We're very honored to be working with this great group of people to continue this far into the future. This is something that you can almost expect from us because we're always in this."

FAST START FOR TELITZ

Telitz turned a lap of 1:07.584 for Belardi Racing – almost fourth-tenths quicker than Lights' veteran Kyle Kaiser.

Another Lights' rookie, Colton Herta, lines up fifth in the 15-car field for the first of two races this weekend.

ANDRETTIS & DISNEY

Andretti Autosport and Walt Disney Productions are teaming up in 2017. Marco Andretti, Ryan Hunter-Reay, Alexander Rossi and Takuma Sato will participate in a special "Mickey & The Roadster Racers Pit Stop" competition at three races this season.

"Mickey & The Roadster Racers" is Disney Junior's newest hit series and there will be interaction between the drivers and children.

The collaboration will also include at-track activities at the Disney Junior Kids Zone at all IndyCar events, special surprise appearances at key events and unique digital content and social experiences for fans.
-Robin Miller

TWO FOR TAKU

Andretti Autosport newcomer Takuma Sato suffered the largest crash of the day. Team Penske's Will Power did right-rear damage when the back of his No. 12 Chevy slid in the morning session and, in the afternoon, Sato incurred significant front-end damage to his No. 26 Honda when he clouted the Turn 12 barriers on his out-lap. Following his crash at Phoenix in the final night session during the IndyCar open test in February, the veteran has lost more valuable track time than is optimal.

"It's good to get back in the car," he said. "It was a very short first practice today, a 45-minute session. We showed some strength. In the second session, we had a problem and I didn't put a time down. It's difficult to say [what caused the incident]. I am excited to come back here and to get the season started. Hopefully we had a good day tomorrow; I have a lot of things to catch up on."

RESERVED HPD

"In general, winning practice gets you nothing, but overall, the direction is right," Honda Performance Development CEO Art. St. Cyr told RACER after the brand's strong Friday showing. The pace of Chevy, which has a long tradition of waiting until qualifying before letting its teams unleash their full potential, is expected to increase on Saturday.

"It's still practice and you don't know what everyone else is doing, but it beats being at the bottom," St. Cyr added.

-Marshall Pruett