"It's great to be with [Guthrie], and we're just working a few kinks out of the car. The hardest thing about today is finding someone to run with you. I towed Sean [Guthrie] around and that worked out but, unfortunately, he wasn't able to return the favour because he had some mechanical problems."
Despite his problems, and a desire to get a third driver out on track, Guthrie's time stood for fourth best on the day, edging out another Atlantic convert, Matt Lee, along the way.
"It was a short day," Guthrie reflected, "We were trying to get [Chris] Festa some time in the car today. We were here for a test about a month ago, so we just went out with the set-up we found there. It took a little bit of time to build speed this morning because it was a little cool but, once we got that fast lap, we decided to stop and let Festa get some laps in."
Lee, meanwhile, was having a taster ahead of deciding where to pitch his lot for 2008.
"We're working out some last minute sponsorship stuff but, hopefully I will be in the car at Homestead," he said of his outing with RLR/Andersen Racing, "With the exception of a clutch problem that made us have a bit of late start - we didn't get on the track until after lunch -- it went really well. It was a productive day. I got my first time mixing it up with the guys in traffic and it felt really nice. The car was good. The engineering staff did a great job with the car."
Rookie James Davison missed much of the morning session after making contact with the barrier in turn two, but still managed to post the sixth best time, The Australian driver was not injured in the incident, but his car sustained rear-end damage.
"I was going into turn one and, real slowly, the rear started to come around on me," he said, "There's nothing I felt that I could have done to prevent it. As a result I slid up, went backwards and touched the wall. "
Fellow rookie Jake Slotten also made contact with the turn two barrier, damaging his car enough to end his test session early.
