Jacques Villeneuve Wins CART Race in Wisconsin

Jacques Villeneuve has been bitten so many times that he almost turned a hard-charging victory into a conservative loss.

Instead, the 30-year-old Canadian driver survived a spin and overcame an intermittent rain and Michael Andretti’s late charge Sunday to win the CART Provimi Veal 200 Indy-car race at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis.

His spin came on lap 39 of the 50-lap, 200-mile race, just moments after he made a quick pit stop to change from regular slick racing tires to grooved rain tires.

“It was quite a bit wetter than I thought it was,” said the younger brother of the late Formula One racing star Gilles Villeneuve. “I didn’t know what to expect and, going into turn five, I drove in a little deep and the rear end just came around.”

He lost all but nine seconds of a 41.9 second edge over second-place Andretti because of that spin. And by lap 42, Andretti was just 4.7 seconds behind.

Villeneuve, who averaged 114.066 m.p.h, pulled away from Andretti steadily the rest of the way, driving his March across the finish line 10 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. He earned $44,640 for his first Indy-car victory.

Villeneuve took the lead earlier on lap 37. He inherited the top spot when Al Unser Jr., who had won the last two road races on the CART schedule, spun and crashed into a guardrail while holding about a 20-second lead.

Unser, the 23-year-old son of three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser, suffered a fractured right ankle and a two-inch laceration on his right heel.

Danny Sullivan, who earned the pole with a track record in qualifying, led before being passed by Unser on lap 14. A broken accelerator on lap 20 cost Sullivan seven laps and he wound up 13th.

In another race at Road America, Willy T. Ribbs inherited the lead when Paul Newman spun out just before the halfway point, then charged to an easy victory in the SCCA-Bendix Brakes Trans-Am.

It was the fifth victory in eight Trans-Am races this season for Ribbs, America’s leading black driver. The win gave the 29-year-old Californian the series point lead, 135-129, over teammate Wally Dallenbach Jr.

Italy’s Michele Alboreto survived a first-corner clash with his Ferrari teammate, Stefan Johansson, to win the German Grand Prix at Nurburgring, West Germany, and increase his slim lead in the 1985 world championship.

Alboreto’s second victory in nine races gave him a total of 46 points to 41 for France’s Alain Prost, second in his McLaren-TAG-Porsche after spinning away a chance to beat the Italian.