Trying to pick my line-up for the IndyCar Classic at the Circuit of the Americas turned out to be a little more difficult than I originally thought. First, I wanted to go with Firestone Grand Prix of St. Petersburg winner Josef Newgarden, but just couldn’t pull that trigger. My reason, the Chevy powered teams weren’t very quick at the COTA open test. Yeah, yeah, it was just a test…practice…but it’s all we’ve got to go on until the cars hit the track on Friday morning!

In fact, looking at the final test session’s time sheet, the Top-6 and 8 of the Top-10 were Honda powered. I honestly don’t expect that much of a disparity to hold up this weekend, but it gave me just enough pause to re-think my line-up. The Penske's will certainly be better, they always improve in situations like this, but again, gotta go with the data available.

The easiest decision this week was to put Colton Herta in my line-up. At just $18 and coming off an 8th place at St. Pete, that was my no brainer for the week. Add in that he led much of the test session (and finished it 2nd in the final session), we know he should be quick at COTA!

For this week, my most expensive pick goes to the guy that led the final session of that 2-day test back in February – Alexander Rossi. Based on his F1 and European ladder experience, this seems to be a natural track for Rossi to attack. Anything less than a front row qualifying result will be a disappointment, sorry for the pressure Alex, but big things (and big points for my team) are expected this weekend.

Rounding out the middle of my line-up are two other drivers’ that performed well at the test, Ryan Hunter-Reay and Graham Rahal. RHR comes in to the weekend with a $28 price tag and Graham filled out the team nicely at $23.

I was also considering Sebastien Bourdais for this weekend, and at the same price as Rahal he would have fit under the $100 salary cap, but he struggled a bit during the COTA test. His best time on the overall time-sheet for the entire was just a 01:48.0166, compared to Herta’s overall leading time of 01:46.6258.

I fully expect the Dale Coyne Racing with Vasser Sullivan team and driver will close that gap considerably, but having to work on the gap instead of fine tuning is a disadvantage going in to this weekend.

All the above noted, if it is going to be a rain race, I reserve the right to adjust my team! If that’s the case on Sunday morning, I’m likely to swap out some drivers to find a spot for Bourdais, Sato, and possibly one of the Swedes (Rosenqvist or Ericsson). Simply a matter of being forced to race in the rain more often in their careers than some others.

With the current weather forecast calling for just a 20% chance of rain on Sunday, we might be ok – though Saturday looks wet at this point – so qualifying could be interesting.

OK, NTT IndyCar Series fans, those are my picks –what are yours?