From Fans to Rivals, Fittipaldi’s Legions Coming of Age : Auto racing: Boesel, de Ferran and several other young Brazilian drivers join their idol at Indy 500.

For more than two decades, Emerson Fittipaldi has been a Pied Piper for young Brazilians who long to drive race cars.

Emmo, as his friends know him, left Sao Paulo in 1970 for Europe to join the Formula One circuit. Two years later, when he won his first world Grand Prix championship, his success inspired some countrymen to leave Brazil to seek fame and fortune abroad.

Among them were the late Ayrton Senna and Raul Boesel, both of whom listed Fittipaldi as their early racing idol.

Ten years later, when Fittipaldi came out of Formula One retirement to drive Indy cars, his success in winning the 1989 and 1993 Indianapolis 500s brought a stream of Brazilians to America’s premier open-wheel series.

Seven of them, including Fittipaldi and Boesel, are here with hopes of being one of the 33 drivers to qualify for the Indy 500 on May 28. The others are Mauricio Gugelmin, who drove 74 Grands Prix before switching to Indy cars in 1992; Marco Greco, a second-year Indy car driver, and rookies Gil de Ferran, Andre Ribeiro and Christian Fittipaldi, Emmo’s nephew.

De Ferran, 27, who drives for Jim Hall’s team, is perhaps the most cosmopolitan driver here. He was born in France, grew up in Brazil, attended school briefly in Wisconsin and learned to drive from former world champion Jackie Stewart in England. While there he met his wife, Angela. They live in Cobham, Surrey, England, with their daughter, Anna Elizabeth, who was born Jan. 5.

“Emmo has been my inspiration, just as he has been for all the other Brazilians,” de Ferran said. “If it weren’t for him, I would probably never have gone to England in my youth, nor would I have come to America to race. All of us owe a great deal to him.”

When de Ferran was signed by Hall to replace the veteran Teo Fabi, he was little known in America, but he caught the attention of racing fans--and his fellow drivers--quickly when he had the fastest lap of his first qualifying session in Miami. He eventually started fourth, but went out early with transmission problems.

“It was quite a feat, being the fastest driver on the track the first day he was ever in an Indy car,” Hall said.

At Long Beach, he again startled his peers by qualifying third and challenging pole-sitter Michael Andretti and eventual winner Al Unser Jr. going into the first turn along Shoreline Blvd. Andretti held the lead, but de Ferran’s bold move impressed Unser.

“I went through the corner and he stayed right with me,” Unser said. “There’s no question he’s a very good driver. We locked wheels for a while, as if we were holding hands. Then we separated and I was able to get into the next corner ahead of him.”

The rookie was third after passing Paul Tracy when Tracy, in a misguided attempt to pass him back, ran into the side of de Ferran’s car, ending the race for both.

Driving on Indianapolis’ 2 1/2-mile oval has been a daunting task for de Ferran, who never drove on a circular track before this year.

“It struck me how easy it is to get in trouble,” the rookie said of his first experience here. “All of a sudden, you’re up to 210 m.p.h. and you become quite aware of the consequences of a mistake. I’ve never done anything like it before.

“In Europe, top speed is about 200 at Hockenheim (Germany). A fast corner is 160 at Silverstone (England). Here you go 235 on the straightaways and 210 through the corners.

“It’s quite a different experience.”

De Ferran learns quickly, however. He took his first laps at Indy on March 23, driving 60 of them in a year-old car and gradually increasing his speed to 207 m.p.h. The next day, he drove 120 more laps and reached 211.

Since arriving here last Saturday to begin practice for time trial qualifications, De Ferran has logged 198 laps with a best speed of 224.467 m.p.h.

“I don’t think running at Indy the first time could be any more pressure than what we put on him the first time he drove for us,” Hall said. “We had an important test last year and Fabi had another commitment, so we needed a driver. The people at Reynard (builders of the chassis Hall’s team uses) recommended de Ferran, so we called him.

“The test was at Big Spring, (Tex.,) and we told him we wanted him to go fast, but not to put a wheel off the track. You do that at Big Spring, where weeds grow right along the road, and you can destroy a car. He was running Fabi’s car, with a race the next week, so we couldn’t take any chances.

“Gil was very impressive. It was his first time in a turbocharged car, but he drove hard, kept the car under control, didn’t make a mistake and brought the car back in one piece. He ran pretty quick too. It turned out to be a two-way test. At the time we weren’t looking for a driver, but when it became apparent that Fabi wasn’t going to drive for us in 1995, de Ferran’s name came up among the drivers we wanted to interview.

“I knew he had driven for Jackie Stewart, and Jackie had driven for me years ago, so I called him. Jackie was very supportive of the opportunity. He said he felt Gil was mature enough to do well in Indy cars.”

In the late ‘60s, Stewart drove Hall’s Can-Am Chaparral, called “the Vacuum Cleaner,” the forerunner of ground-effects cars in motor racing.

“Stewart took me from the Formula Ford level (of racing) to where I am now,” de Ferran said. “I learned a hell of a lot from him and he was very influential in my decision to drive Indy cars.

“He has what he calls ‘a staircase of talent,’ . . . three teams at different levels, each with its own drivers, mechanics and cars. They work their way up through Formula Three and Formula 3,000. I joined the team in 1990, and one of my teammates was David Coulthard, the new Williams Formula One driver. I’m sure he benefited from Stewart’s program.”

De Ferran learned about pressure at an early age.

When he was 14, he wanted a racing kart. His parents said he could have one if he passed a difficult entrance exam to a private school. He passed it, went karting and a year later won the Brazilian national 100cc championship.

“I would say the odds were about 20-1 against my passing that test,” he said with a grin.

Later, he studied mechanical engineering at Sao Paulo University but dropped out to go to Europe and pursue his racing career.

He speaks French, Portuguese and fluent English, a talent he credits to three months as an exchange student in Mt. Hope, Wis.

“I went from a student of book English in Brazil to speaking well,” he said. “The thing I remember most about Wisconsin was that I never saw a piece of green. It was all white. We only had three days above freezing.”