EDMONTON, Alberta – Spectators in any of the grandstands bordering the 2.24-mile, 13-turn City Centre Airport circuit have a panoramic view, and they’ll see plenty of action in the Edmonton Indy.

With three long straights (almost a half-mile between Turns 13 and 1, crossing the start-finish line; a little over a quarter mile between Turns 2 and 5; and three-tenths of a mile between Turns 12 and 13) intermixed with sharp turns and 120 seconds of push to pass available, “there’s going to be a lot of overtaking because of this track,” Dale Coyne Racing’s Justin Wilson said.

The 2011 race on the new course, which replaced the 1.75-mile runway/taxiway circuit at the opposite end of the airport, produced six lead changes and dozens more throughout the grid. Will Power of Team Penske prevailed.

“People can defend, but the straights are long enough and wide enough that you can go inside or outside to pass,” said Wilson, who won the 2006 race. “You go from hairpin to hairpin to hairpin. There’s not the desperation out there to defend to keep that position the rest of the race. You pass me, OK I’ll just pass you back in the next corner or use push to pass and pass them on the next straight. I think it will produce a lot of overtaking and a lot of good racing.”

The 25 drivers will utilize the overtake assist for the second consecutive race. The feature, introduced to the IZOD IndyCar Series in 2010, allows a driver to add turbocharger boost and additional RPM for a pre-determined amount of time with the press of a button on the steering wheel. Drivers will receive one push to pass press of the button in the July 22 warm-up in addition to the 120 total seconds for the 75-lap race.

"Edmonton used to have a series of high-speed corners but now it's all about low speed turns,” said Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing’s Takuma Sato, the 2011 pole sitter who recorded the quickest race lap at 1 minute, 18.9590 seconds. “It has got a couple of long straights followed by very tight hairpins so to have strong braking stability and traction are very important. The new pavement and new part of the course is very smooth but we still use the old part of the complex and it is quite bumpy.

“After the radical course change last year, although it still includes the old part of the track, it's almost a brand-new circuit. No one had an advantage or knowledge of the new track and everyone started from a clean sheet of paper, which helped me a lot.”

This year, drivers and their crews will attempt to dial in the set-up for the bumps, hard-braking zones and long straights with the new car-engine package.

“The new part of it -- the first four or five corners --is new tarmac, so that's pretty smooth,” said Mike Conway of A.J. Foyt Racing. “The rest of it gets back to the old bumpy track, so it's really two disciplines you've got to work on. The last corner is a really tight hairpin so you brake as late as you can and get out as quick as you can. The first corner's a massive braking zone where you can find time and the third corner is another really tight hairpin so you've got to have a car that stops well and turns well over the bumps.

"(The best places to pass are) last corner, first corner, Turn 3, all the hairpins basically you have a good chance of passing people because you've got long straights in between.”