Rookies prepare for Nazareth.

Four of CART's rookie crop took advantage of the long mid-race break between Long Beach and Texas to get in some much needed practice on another of the schedule's punishing ovals.

Newcomers Bruno Junqueira and Nicolas Minassian of Target Chip Ganassi Racing, Scott Dixon of the PacWest Racing Group and Tora Takagi of Walker Racing utilised one of their three allotted in-season testing days at Nazareth Speedway in preparation for round four of the FedEx Championship Series - the Lehigh Valley Grand Prix presented by Toyota.

Unofficially, Junqueira led the group with a lap of 176.470mph (20.4secs) on the one-mile oval.

"I'm glad we tested here in November," the Brazilian said, "It has made my trips to other ovals much easier. I like this track. It is very challenging. You can't run flat out, like [you can] on some of the other ovals. I'm looking forward to coming back here in a couple weeks."

Dixon, the 2000 Dayton Indy Lights champion, was unofficially second fastest of the quartet, at 20.6secs (174.757mph). He was the only member of the group with previous racing experience at Nazareth, having finished fourth in a 1999 Indy Lights event.

"We [rookies] get three extra days to test, and I think we chose Nazareth because in pre-season testing we struggled a lot on short oval tracks," the New Zealander said, "Nazareth is one of the harder ones, and with Indy Lights not [having raced] at Nazareth last year, we felt we could learn a lot."

Takagi, making only his third appearance on an oval, posted a fast lap of 20.8secs (173.077mph), while Minassian was just a tick further back at 20.9secs (172.249mph). Target Chip Ganassi Racing has won two of the past three FedEx Championship Series events at Nazareth, getting victories from Jimmy Vasser in 1998 and Juan Montoya in 1999.