LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX : Mario Andretti, So Far, Has the Inside Track

When Chris Pook awoke Friday morning and looked out his window, there was a gigantic rainbow that appeared to begin at the start-finish line of the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach and wind up on the Queen Mary.

April showers may bring May flowers, but it doesn’t rain on Pook’s parade--except to clean the track.

Pook power, they call his magic with the weatherman in Long Beach, where his race Sunday will kick off the city’s centennial celebration this year. In 13 years it has rained all around the race but never on it.

An all-night shower Thursday left the track squeaky clean for Friday’s opening round of qualifications, and Mario Andretti, who else, responded with a lap at 89.853 m.p.h. around the 11-turn, 1.67-mile temporary circuit.

That gave the race’s three-time winner the provisional pole for Sunday’s 95-lap, 158.65-mile race over portions of Shoreline Drive, Pine Avenue and Seaside Way, plus a dash through the underground garage of the Hyatt Regency.

“The rain helped because it washed all the dust and crud away,” Andretti said. “When we get some more rubber down tomorrow, I except we’ll see much quicker times. Maybe as much as a full second.”

Andretti’s lap Friday lasted 66.899 seconds. A second off that in today’s final qualifying round at 11:30 a.m. would produce a lap at a record 91.3 m.p.h. Andretti set the record last year at 91.249. In 1986, Danny Sullivan won the pole at 92.190, but it was over a slightly different course.

If Andretti wins the pole today it will be a record 65th in Indy cars for the 48-year-old grandfather from Nazareth, Pa. Second is A. J. Foyt, with 53.

Foyt, driving at Long Beach for the first time, found the concrete walls unforgiving and crashed during the qualifying session.

“I cut the corner (Turn 11, a hairpin leading to Shoreline Drive),” Foyt said. “Normally, you can whitewall a tire, but something was sticking out of the wall and it jabbed into the wheel.”

Before the accident, Foyt had turned a lap at 82.075, which puts him 22nd on the provisional starting grid.

Said Andretti: “We’ll have to bleed every ounce out of the car again tomorrow. If we lose just a tick on the watch, we can slip from first to fifth, it’s that tight.”

Right behind Andretti is Rick Mears, who won the pole last week at Phoenix International Raceway for the Indy car season opener. Mears ran 89.671, much faster than he has ever run on the street circuit.

“This car was designed better to go around a road course,” Mears said. “That’s what we’ve been working on the last couple of years. I still think we can get some more out of it in tomorrow morning’s practice session before we qualify.”

Mears was closely followed by his Penske teammate, Sullivan, at 89.576, and Al Unser Jr., back with Rick Galles’ team after having left him two years ago, at 89.531.

All were using Chevrolet Indy V-8 engines, designed by Mario Ilien.

“The engine demonstrated that it works well in all three chassis--the PC-17 (driven by Mears and Sullivan), the Lola (Andretti) and the March (Unser),” Ilien said. “The top four cars were within .241 seconds, but it is still only Friday and a lot can happen between now and Sunday.”

Fastest of the once-dominant Cosworths was Mario’s son, Michael, who was fifth at 88.478.

“I’m disappointed,” Michael Andretti said. “Somewhere we have to find another second. I don’t think the Chevies have anything on us. I passed a lot of them out on the course. The cars ahead of us are just handling better, that’s all.”

Even more disappointed was the third Andretti, John, whose Mike Curb-owned car arrived at the track with the wrong turbocharger. He did not get in a lap.

Between practice and qualifying, Mario was tutoring one of his car owners, Paul Newman, about the subtleties of getting around the walled Long Beach circuit. Newman is making his first start here in today’s Trans-Am sedan race.

“We got him a big map of the course and went over it with him,” Andretti said. “He likes the track, he’ll do all right.”

Scott Pruett, last year’s Trans-Am champion who won 7 of 12 races, including Long Beach, had a busy afternoon.

First, he qualified 11th in his first Indy car race with a lap at 87.060 m.p.h., despite getting in only three laps before the half-shaft broke, and then came back later in the day to take the pole for the 60-lap Trans-Am. The youngster from Roseville, Calif., did 77.831 in his Merkur, beating out veteran Irv Hoerr, who did 77.399 in an Olds Cutlass.

Newman qualified seventh in his Nissan at 75.563, just behind the No. 1 female Trans-Am driver, Lyn St. James, who did 76.349 in a Merkur.

The Trans-Am race will start at 4 p.m. today.