Lucas Place Motorsports Quick In Testing At Homestead
3 February 1998
Lucas Place Motorsports continued to record promising test speeds during a recent test at the Homestead Motorsports Complex in Florida. Brian Cunningham and Geoff Boss shared the testing duties over the four days of testing on the oval and infield road course. Cunningham completed 350 miles on the oval before a crash and Boss ran 650 miles on the oval and road course.Cunningham ran a 29.2 second lap on the oval, which was .2 second faster than any of the other competitors at the test. However, on the final day of the oval testing, Cunningham spun and impacted the turn four wall hard. The crash destroyed the car and left Cunningham with a broken left leg. The injury will keep him out of action for 4-5 weeks, but he is expected to be able to participate in the season opener at Homestead on March 15. Lucas Place Motorsports is expecting to take delivery of a new Lola chassis to replace the one that was totaled in the accident this week.
Following the incident, testing was halted for the rest of the day and the crew prepared Boss's car for the road course. However the first scheduled day of road course testing was canceled due to heavy rain. Boss, who ran very competitively on the oval, only .2 second behind his teammate was left to gather data for the team. Despite only one day on the road course, Boss drove smoothly to times that were faster than anyone else.
"Our oval testing was very productive despite the crash," said team manager Chris Lucas. "We had planned to do some extensive shock development, but with the crash and the weather we were not able to get everything done that we wanted to. We did establish a baseline car setup that should work well when we come back for the open test on March 10-11 and the race in March. We'll have both Brian and Geoff at that test to make final preparations for the race."
In other news, the 14 race 1998 Indy Lights schedule has been released. The series will test drivers on eight street or road courses and six ovals in the upcoming year.
1998 CART PPG Dayton Indy Lights Schedule
March 15 Homestead, FL April 5 Long Beach, CA April 26 Nazareth, PA May 23 Madison, IL May 31 Milwaukee, WI June 7 Detroit, MI June 21 Portland, OR July 12 Cleveland, OH July 19 Toronto, Canada July 25 Brooklyn, MI August 2 Trois-Rivieres, Canada September 6 Vancouver, Canada September 13 Monterey, CA October 31 Fontana, CA
