LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX NOTES : Mansell, Fittipaldi Lead Way in Qualifying

To no one’s surprise, Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi were the fastest drivers Friday, the first day of qualifying for the 20th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. More time trials today will set the field for Sunday’s 105-lap Indy car race through the streets of Long Beach.

Mansell, who sat on the pole seven times last year and was fast qualifier in the season opener in Australia, lapped the circuit at 107.919 m.p.h. in his Lola-Ford. Fittipaldi, the Indy car points leader after a second-place finish at Australia and a victory last Sunday in Phoenix, is at 107.846.

“Whoever wins the pole tomorrow had better be a half-second quicker,” Mansell said after his 53.040 second lap. “I was quite pleased with my lap, I got everything I could out of it, but I was not pleased with the time.”

Mansell’s time was slightly slower than the track record of 108.098 m.p.h. he set last year.

“Nigel says he needs a half-second, so that means a full second for me,” said Al Unser Jr., a four-time Long Beach winner. Unser was third fastest at 106.827.

“A half-second is light years here,” he said. “We’re going to work very hard to find it before (this) afternoon.”

Final qualifying will start at 11:45 a.m.

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Steve Robertson, winner of the Indy Lights race last year, ran a track-record 98.736 m.p.h. to take the provisional pole for Sunday’s race for Buick-powered Indy Lights.

Robertson, like Mansell an Englishman, bettered the record of 98.300 by Franck Freon of France. Freon, who lives in Anaheim during the racing season, will make his Indy car debut Sunday.

Second-fastest qualifier is former world motorcycle champion Eddie Lawson at 98.246. Lawson is a teammate of Robertson on Steve Horne’s Tasman team.

Canadian Greg Moore, who won wire to wire last Sunday in Phoenix, is fourth fastest. A second Indy Lights qualifying session is scheduled today.

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After serving as a tutor for several of his Toyota pro-celebrity rivals, Juan Manuel Fangio II showed them how to do it by easily winning the pole for today’s 10-lap race. The two-time Camel GTP champion did a lap of 67.842 in one of the identically prepared Celicas.

World champion jet skier Christy Carlson got out of her car after the morning practice and made a beeline for Fangio for a lesson. Fellow celebs Alfonso Ribeiro and Mark-Paul Gosselaar joined Carlson in learning the proper braking points and apexes from Fangio, now a Toyota test driver.

“I was with Cruz Pedregon and Clay Regazzoni when Fangio just passed us like we weren’t moving,” said Ribeiro of NBC’s “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” Let me tell you, at Turn 3 my car was saying, ‘I want the wall! I want the wall!’ and I was saying, ‘No you don’t! No you don’t!”

Anthony Smith, the Raiders’ 265-pound defensive end, paid the price of size when he was the slowest qualifier among 17 celebrities at 61.529 m.p.h.

“My mom’s really nervous about this race,” Smith said. “I was changing gears, got a little nervous myself and pulled the stick shift out of the gear box. I think my mom probably made my gearbox fall out.”

Regazzoni, the inaugural Formula One winner at Long Beach, qualified third behind Fangio and Brian Redman in a car specially prepared with hand controls. The veteran Swiss driver is paralyzed from the waist down from injuries suffered in the 1980 Long Beach race.

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Besides second-day qualifying and the pro-celebrity race, today’s program includes a 30-minute Supercar race and a demonstration of electric cars.

Long Beach Grand Prix

* When: Sunday, 1 p.m.

* Where: City streets of Long Beach. Start/Finish line on Shoreline Drive.

* Length: 166.95 miles (105 laps).

* Track: 1.59 miles. Eight turns.

* Defending champion: Paul Tracy.

* Celebrity race: Today, 2 p.m.