06.APR
Report from the Long Beach Practice Sessions

When the practice sessions for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach were completed Max Wilson had showed that he would be a force to be reckoned with this year.

The Arciero-Blair Racing crew attends to Max's Lola during Friday practice. Check out the day's Slide Show

 

The rookie driver from Brazil was 8th, 17th and 6th respectively in the three sessions. Max showed the rest of the CART FedEx Championship Series that he is a fast learner in the most competitive open-wheel racing series in the world. 

Had he not made a small mistake that sidelined him for the final minutes of the second session on Friday he might have been in the top 10 in all three sessions. 

As it was, he showed that he could run in the top 10 in both dry and wet conditions. The final session on Saturday morning was run in wet conditions. Max's time was less than one second off the pace of Kenny Brack in that wet session. 

"The situation was different from Mexico. We started with a much better car and we were able to do some good lap times," said the happy Wilson. "We will work on the car to make it better and we'll see if we can do a good qualifying (performance)." 

His quickest practice lap on the 1.968 mile temporary circuit in the streets of Long Beach was 1:08.982 seconds, approximately 1.2s. slower than quickest lap of practice, turned by Tony Kanaan. Wilson's average speed was 102.706 mph for that lap.