Chevys dominate practices for Iowa Corn 300 at Iowa Speedway

NEWTON - After 90 minutes of practice on Friday afternoon at Iowa Speedway, it was business as usual for a familiar face of success in the Verizon IndyCar Series.

Ganassi Racing driver Tony Kanaan paced both sessions in his No. 10 Chevy, leading the first session at 179.218 mph and the second at 181.273 mph. Kanaan seeks his sixth straight podium finish in the Iowa Corn 300, and between his prowess at the track and his manufacturer's dominance on ovals, he heads into Saturday's race as the favorite to do just that.

After a brutally hot and slick day on the racetrack, the 2010 winner of this race can feel it, too.

'I don't know, we've just always been good here. I think we have a pretty good setup. The track suits my style. The short ovals are definitely one of my strengths. I think that's pretty much what it is,” Kanaan said. 'It's going to be a very close qualifying tomorrow, I think, especially with the weather. It's going to be a lot hotter than it was this afternoon, so we'll see. So far I think we're pretty happy with the racecar, so we'll see what's going to happen.”

Kanaan and teammate Scott Dixon were first and second in both sessions, with Dixon just a whisper behind Kanaan in both sessions at 179.113 mph and 181.229 mph.

The extreme heat - the heat index going well into triple digits on Friday - threw teams a curveball. Conditions are expected to remain that way Saturday, drivers and teams will eagerly await the sun going down. Kanaan said the grip level should go up tremendously when that happens, but until then, what teams learned Friday will help qualifying and the start of the race.

'These sessions are so short, everybody trying to achieve different things makes it very confusing out there to see what people are actually trying to do,” Dixon said. 'I think, (with) straight-out speed, we're definitely OK. The car seems decent in race trim. The car isn't as fast as last year. Whether it's the track, it's obviously extremely hot here this weekend. With the ambient conditions and track temps way up, grip is going to be definitely key to the race.”

Chevrolets dominated the speed charts in both practice sessions, as they have all season on ovals.

In the first session, Chevy comprised 10 of the first 12 spots on the leaderboard. In the second session, the first 11 spots were Chevys, and the worst among their group was rookie driver Stefano Coletti in 16th.

By contrast, Honda had Ryan Hunter-Reay in third in the first session, but otherwise didn't have a car in the top 10 in either session. That theme has played out in single-car runs throughout the season, and is expected to continue in qualifying before the race Saturday afternoon.

Consistently the best Honda all season, Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing driver Graham Rahal was 15th in both sessions at 172.209 mph and 177.935 mph respectively. Rahal - who has five podiums this season and two in a row headed into Iowa Speedway - said the biggest difficulty early will be overcoming what's likely to be a big deficit to start the Iowa Corn 300 that rolls off at 7:30 p.m. on NBCSN.

'It could become a bit of track position. I don't think the entire race will be a track position race, but starting up front and getting that half a lap advantage is a hard thing to overcome,” Rahal said. 'We were honestly just trying to learn what our car has in race trim. We found some stuff at the very end, unfortunately we found it very late.

'We'll be OK. We're not going to trick ourselves out here. We saved an extra set of tires. I think we're a set of tires better than pretty much everybody else around here - at least better than a few.”

Rahal said if he can fight from going a lap down early on the 7/8-mile oval - something that will be a tall task with lap times ranging from 17.5-18.5 seconds - then the race should come to him.

His single-car team sits fourth in points headed into Saturday, 69 behind leader Juan Pablo Montoya - who was sixth and fifth in the two practice sessions - and can't afford a bad day if he wants to stay in the hunt for the title.

'The race will even out for sure,” Rahal said. 'And our strength has been, all year, keeping rears under the car the whole stint. I hope that plays out to be true. We need that. We can't have a bad one anymore. This team's been doing a hell of a job; we just have to keep working hard. We just have to hope it goes our way. Clearly, we're at a bit of a disadvantage here, and it's showing.

'It grows character, builds character. Quite frankly, I've found a lot of pride in taking the fight to the big boys. We're going to keep doing that.”

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