MIPS: Test leaves Nunn with difficult decision.

Menards Infiniti Pro Series team owner Kathryn Nunn admits that she has some difficult decisions ahead of her, after being impressed by each of the seven female drivers that ran in one of her cars at Texas Motor Speedway this week.

The Nunn Motorsports owner will now spend the next few weeks evaluating the results of the three-day test to determine which of the seven should be offered a full-time ride for 2005. Nunn says she plans to have reached a decision by the second week of December, but things may take longer than that.

"The test has so exceeded my expectations," she said, "I had hoped that it would be a good test, but I was probably a little more nervous than I needed to be. These women were so much more capable than I expected - I knew that they would be good, but some of them just amazed me. There were so many surprises, and to narrow the field down will be so, so difficult."

Each driver completed approximately 90 laps over two sessions on the 1.5-mile high-banked oval. Top speeds were within half a second of 2004 series champion Thiago Medeiros' record pole time of 27.6277secs, which the Brazilian set at the Fort Worth venue in October.

"The first day out was kind of just take my time to get up to speed and make sure I was comfortable," MIPS hopeful Becca Anderson said, "We turned some pretty good laps on the first day as we got comfortable. Today when we went out, they made a lot of different changes. They took the flats off the car to take some downforce away and that really picked the speed up on the car and made it a little bit easier to drive, a little bit freer. I think it's kind of closer to the feel of what it's going to be if you get a chance to race them.

"It was a little bit of an adjustment running on tarmac - the g-forces and how stuck the cars are is the big difference, but you still drive a sprint car the same way. You're trying to be as straight as possible, even though they do get sideways. As far as trying to be smooth and straight, it didn't really change a whole lot, but the feel is completely different. These cars are just so locked down they don't budge."

The diversity in driver backgrounds also included three racers who had never driven on ovals before - WKA karting champion Juliana Chiovitti, sportscar racer Rossella Manfrinato and British FRenault 'veteran' Katherine Legge, who had flown out to watch the test and ended up impressing Nunn as much as here American rivals.

"When I first went out there, I felt like I had to muscle the car around, but then I just learned to relax and drive it like I was sitting on the couch," said 23-year old Canadian Chiovitti, "After that, it was take your time and let it all come to you."

Sarah McCune was the only driver with previous experience in a Menards Infiniti Pro Series car, having tested with Sam Schmidt Motorsports at Kentucky Speedway in 2003.

"I think it helped knowing how the g-forces are going to feel, and other things you don't really feel in other open-wheel cars," she said, "These are really the only open-wheel cars that go fast enough to feel the g-forces on your body. I think I knew what to expect, but I was real nervous because it's still a competition."

Nunn has said that she will seek help in evaluating the results from the competition to determine who moves forward with the team.

"I'll sit down with the engineers and our crew chief, with some input from [series director] Roger Bailey and [MIPS technical director] Butch Meyer, and we'll talk about their car control, how good they were in the car, and how competent - that'll be the main criteria," Nunn revealed, "After that, we will be looking at marketability. We need to be concerned about how good they'll be with the sponsors, how well they'll interact with our sponsors, and with the team."

Nunn is working hard on finding sponsorship which will allow her to run two of the women next season.

"I'd really like to have a two-car women's team, so that's what I'm headed toward," she confirmed, "Hopefully, we'll have one who is predominantly a road racer and, maybe, one who is better on ovals, so they'll cover each other and they'll learn from each other."

The 2005 MIPS season will feature a series-high 14 races, including the addition of four road courses.