Phoenix 200 : Penske Team Beats All in Practice, Except Fittipaldi in a Penske

Optimism as high as the searing Arizona sun pervades pit row at Phoenix International Raceway as 26 drivers prepare for the opening of the Championship Auto Racing Teams season for Indy cars here Sunday in the Autoworks 200.

As yet, no one has failed to qualify, no one has crashed, no one has had an engine failure. New equipment has not yet failed, and old equipment has been upgraded optimistically.

Optimism is better placed, however, in some camps than in others. After all, motor racing is a sport in which the rich get richer, and the rest take the leftovers.

The Penske team, which won it all last year with Danny Sullivan taking the PPG driving championship and Rick Mears his third Indianapolis 500, seems poised for an even more impressive season, with its Penske chassis powered by 720-horsepower Ilmor Chevrolet engines.

Car owner Roger Penske and engineer-designer Nigel Bennett have unveiled a new model, the PC-18, for Sullivan and Mears, and have sold one as well to Pat Patrick’s team for driver Emerson Fittipaldi. From early testing, it appears to be better than last year’s Bennett-designed PC-17, which won six races and 11 pole positions in 15 races.

Mears, admittedly running under optimum conditions--cool, the sun going down, no wind and fresh tires--had a practice lap at 172 m.p.h. around the tricky Phoenix one-mile oval last month, shockingly quicker than Mario Andretti’s 1986 record of 165.776.

“I don’t expect anything close to that this week, not in this heat,” Mears said after Friday’s practice in which he and Fittipaldi were more than 3 m.p.h. faster than anyone else. Fittipaldi’s lap of 165.975 unofficially bettered Andretti’s track record. Mears’ hot lap was 165.411.

Qualifying for Sunday’s 200-mile race will be held today, starting at 11:30 a.m. when the temperature is expected to be above 100 degrees and the track slippery.

Sullivan, who has not done as much testing in the PC-18 as Mears and has no such numbers, is equally optimistic, however, about defending his championship.

“There’s one thing about winning, it makes you want to win more,” Sullivan said. “I’d like to win Indy this year and the championship, too. That’s my objective right now. Sounds like a nice one, doesn’t it?”

The most intriguing team here is the tandem of Mario and Michael Andretti, father and son teammates for the first time in a pair of Lola-Chevrolets campaigned by Paul Newman and Carl Haas.

“It sounds like a perfect setting for an episode of ‘Family Feud,’ ” one competitor said, anonymously.

Mario, who has been racing at Phoenix since 1964 and has eight poles and three wins to his credit, including last year’s Checker 200, has been notorious in his insistence on driving for a one-car team. Last year, however, after Michael left the Cosworth-powered Kraco team because he wanted a Chevrolet engine, his father agreed to accept him as a teammate.

Although Al Unser and Al Jr. have competed together in a number of Indy car races, they were never teammates. This will be the first time a father and son have driven for the same team in CART.

“I have always wanted an entire team’s effort focused on my car, and mine alone,” Mario said. “But I think you’d have to say this is a unique situation.

“Of course, it remains to be seen if he and I are still on speaking terms at the end of the season.”

Intriguing, too, is the entry of A. J. Foyt, starting his 33rd Indy car season with plans to run his own Lola-Cosworth the entire 15-race series.

Foyt is here also as a coach of Tony George, whose family owns Indianapolis Motor Speedway. George, grandson of the late Tony Hulman, is driving in today’s 75-mile American Racing Series race in a Buick Wildcat owned by Foyt.

“Tony’s like one of my own children,” Foyt said. “I’ve known him since he was born. He branched off and did some racing with some other people the past couple years, but I felt if he really wants to be serious about it, I would give him all the help I could.”

Curiously, Foyt owns the largest Chevy dealership in Texas, but still isn’t one of the favored few who have the Ilmor Chevy engines that accounted for 14 of last year’s 15 race wins.

Only Bobby Rahal, with a Judd, broke the Chevrolet monopoly last year.

But Rahal, who won CART championships in 1986 and 1987, has switched, too, from Judd to the newly developed short-stroke Cosworth.

In addition to Sullivan, Mears, Fittipaldi and the Andrettis, Chevy engines will be used by Al Unser Jr. this week, and by Al Unser and Geoff Brabham at Indianapolis and two other races.

“I’d like to have a Chevy, and so would just about every other driver here,” Rahal said. “But I think we’ll close the gap a bit this year. Michael (Andretti) showed the short-stroke’s potential when he won the (non-points) Marlboro Challenge last fall in Miami.

Even though most of the cars were being sorted out officially for the first time Friday, the pattern followed last year’s. The six fastest were Chevies.

Scott Pruett, moving out of the sports car ranks to drive an Indy car, heads a group of five rookies here. Pruett, a former Trans-Am and International Motor Racing Assn. champion, replaced Rahal in the Truesports Lola-Judd.

The other first-timers are Steve Saleen of Anaheim and three foreign drivers, Guido Dacco of Italy, Jean Pierre Frey of Switzerland and Bernard Jourdain, a rich Belgian now living in Mexico.

“We are a new team, with a new driver, a new sponsor, and we bring a new enthusiasm to the motorsports arena,” said Saleen, 40, a manufacturer of custom-built Mustangs who drove in Formula Atlantic races in 1979 and 1980 with other young drivers such as Sullivan, Rahal and Brabham.

“Being a team owner and driver is not uncommon, but there are very few of us out there. I’m not the only businessman out there. We are all corporate players whether we are in the board room of a sponsor or behind the wheel.

“As far as the risks involved, being in business these days you have to stay ahead of the next guy, and the same applies to the race track. My weekends, I just trade bottom lines for the finish lines.”

Another newcomer, but as a car owner and not a driver, is Bruce Leven, a longtime competitor in the International Motorsports Assn., whose Bayside Motorsports team will have Dominic Dobson, the fastest Indy 500 rookie qualifier in history, as his driver. Dobson, in a manner of speaking, is a rookie here.

Although he has raced go-karts, Formula Fords, Super Vees, Formula Atlantics and driven in 15 Indy car races, this is his first racing appearance at Phoenix.

And, for the hometown fans, Tom Sneva is making a comeback of sorts with Vince Granatelli’s Phoenix-based team. Sneva, the 1983 Indy 500 champion and a four-time winner at Phoenix, missed almost the entire 1988 season.

He will be at a disadvantage Sunday, however. The Granatelli team is developing a turbocharged Buick V-6 stock block engine that should be competitive at Indy, where it will be permitted 55 inches of boost. But for all other races, it is allowed only 45 inches and historically that has not made it an equal partner with Chevy, Cosworth or Judd.

A few years ago, the Phoenix race was looked upon as mostly a prep for Indy, a chance to look at the new equipment and experiment a bit with the Speedway in mind. No more. The $17-million series, anchored by the $1.5-million PPG driver’s bonus, has become a significant entity in itself.