On a cloudy day with sporadic rain showers, Dreyer & Reinbold Racing’s Buddy Rice and Milka Duno took to Detroit’s Belle Isle circuit for practice on Friday in preparations for Saturday’s qualifying and Sunday’s Detroit Grand Prix presented by Firestone.

Rice led the way for the team turning in 44 laps on the 2.07-mile temporary street circuit.  His best time was 1:16.6437.  Duno turned in 56 laps herself with a best time of 1:20.6361.

Rain showered the track before the morning session, and even though the rains cleared, not many laps were turned by a majority of the drivers as the track was not quite at ideal conditions.

In the afternoon practice session, the rains returned, making things difficult for the drivers to get in clean practice runs and improve their lap times.

The third practice will be on Saturday morning at 8:30 with two groups having 30-minutes each.  Qualifying will be at 11:30 a.m.  Both times listed are in ET, and both sessions can be seen live via streaming video on indycar.com.

The race can be seen live in HD on August 31st at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC.

QUOTES

#15 DREYER & REINBOLD RACING Honda Dallara Driver Buddy Rice

"Today was not very good.  We were quick here last year.  We just have to try and keep up with the changing conditions.  The weather has been a bit of an issue for us.  We need to make the car better.  I think we’ll be a lot better tomorrow morning.  We’re going to make some pretty big changes tonight.  It’s stuff we’ve done in the past.  That doesn’t mean it’s going to be right, but we’ll have it on the track when we need to and in the right direction when we need to.”

#23 CITGO/DREYER & REINBOLD RACING Honda Dallara Driver Milka Duno

"It's a complicated track, and I'm continuing to learn as much as possible throughout each practice session.  This is my first time competing at the Raceway at Belle Isle Park and it will only be my third road course with the IndyCar Series."