CART’s Start at Miami Grand Prix Has a Familiar Look

The cast of characters is pretty much the same, the enthusiasm is high and all indications point to a prosperous and successful racing season.

Only the name has changed.

Championship Auto Racing Teams cars, the open-wheel, open-cockpit ones we once knew as Indy cars, will open their season Sunday with the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami. They aren’t Indy cars any longer because (1) they won’t be running at Indianapolis and (2) Indianapolis Motor Speedway President Tony George went to court to make them drop Indy from their

trademark logo to avoid confusion with his Indy Racing League.

Chip Ganassi’s pair of Jimmy Vasser and Alex Zanardi, who dominated the series last year, appear ready to take up where they left off.

Vasser, who won last year’s Miami race and his first PPG Cup World Series in Ganassi’s Reynard-Honda, will be back with the same team package when the green flag drops for the 227-mile race on the 1.517-mile oval in the Metro-Dade Homestead Complex.

“We’re going to approach this race the same as we did last year,” Vasser said. “Our plan is to put ourselves in a position to be in the top five, and if we do that, we’ll be in a position to win races in case someone in front of us has misfortune.

“Being champion gives me a good feeling, and a lot of pride, but it won’t mean anything once that first race starts. Everybody’s starting out with a clean slate. Knowing we’re at Homestead, though, is special because that’s where I won my first race. The start we got early in the season was the foundation for our championship.”

Zanardi, last year’s rookie of the year, is the hottest driver on the circuit. He qualified on the front row for each of the last eight races and was on the pole for the last four. He also won the final race at Laguna Seca with his banzai charge through the dirt to beat Bryan Herta on the final lap.

If Zanardi makes the front row in Saturday’s qualifying, it will be a CART record. Bobby Unser had eight in a row in 1979-80, as did Bobby Rahal in 1985.

“The record is something that is nice, and I would love to break that tie,” said Zanardi, a former Formula One driver. “However, it is not for the record, but because that will give me a [PPG Cup] point.”

There will be some changes. New rules call for smaller wings, which will reduce the downforce by nearly half, and the engine turbocharger pressure has been cut from 45 to 40 inches of boost, which should take away about 100 horsepower.

And the Homestead track has been widened 24 feet in the turns, making the length 1.517 miles compared to 1.527 last year.

“I think things will wind up pretty much the same,” Vasser said. “They took away some horsepower, but the tire and engine engineers have made improvements so that our lap times are nearly the same as last year. Losing the downforce with the smaller wings adds a little more to the driving equation, which I like.”

In recent spring training at Homestead, Vasser and Zanardi were quickest of the 27 CART drivers on hand. Vasser ran 195.467 mph and Zanardi 195.174, about 3 mph slower than Paul Tracy’s pole speed of 198.590 mph last year.

Michael Andretti was Vasser’s chief challenger last year, but this year the Newman-Haas veteran and teammate Christian Fittipaldi will be in a new chassis design. Swift Engineering of San Clemente, a builder of smaller formula cars for the last decade, will display its first PPG Cup chassis at Miami. It will be powered by the same Ford Cosworth engine that helped Andretti win five races in a Lola last year.

“The way this whole program is coming together, I believe we are taking less of a risk running the new Swift than we would have with the Lola,” Andretti said. “Each time Christian and I have tested, the car felt good, right on the mark. That rarely happens with a new car, but one reason is that [designer] David Bruns incorporated a lot of ideas from our Lola into the Swift design. I’m confident we will be winning races.”

Swift will be the only American-made car to start the series as Dan Gurney’s All American Racers team will run British-built Reynards instead of the Santa Ana-made Eagles they ran last season.

New faces include Richie Hearn, who drove in both CART and the Indy Racing League last year before car owner John Della Penna decided to stick with CART; and three foreign rookies--Patrick Carpentier of Canada, the Player’s/Toyota Atlantic series champion; Gualter Salles of Brazil, third-place finisher in Indy Lights last year, and Dario Franchitti of Scotland, who is replacing the semiretired Emerson Fittipaldi [Christian’s uncle] with Carl Hogan’s team.

Fittipaldi, 50, still recuperating from an accident in the Marlboro 500 last July in Michigan, has announced that he will not drive in CART this season but left open the options of returning to the cockpit in 1998. A resident of the Miami suburb of Key Biscayne, Fittipaldi will be the grand marshal for Sunday’s race.

NASCAR

As Jeff Gordon, 25, and Dale Earnhardt, 45, head for Richmond International Raceway for the Pontiac Excitement 400 on Sunday, the third race of the Winston Cup series, their recent records are as far apart as their ages. Gordon, defending champion in the multicolored DuPont Chevrolet, won the Daytona 500 and last week’s GM Goodwrench 400 at Rockingham, N.C., becoming the first driver to win the season’s first two races since David Pearson won Riverside and Daytona in 1976. No driver has won the first three.

On the other hand, this is the worst start for Earnhardt since he joined the tour full time in 1979. The seven-time champion has not won since last March 10 at Atlanta, a stretch of 29 races.

Officials of the National Marrow Donor Program received 16,578 phone calls after NASCAR and leukemia victim Rick Hendrick initiated a drive for potential donors before the Daytona 500.

NHRA

Ten-time Winston pro stock champion Bob Glidden did not compete in last week’s series in Phoenix for only the second time since his career started in 1972. Glidden was in Rockingham, N.C., putting together a deal to build stock car engines for NASCAR driver Geoff Bodine. . . . Graham Light, senior vice president of racing operations for the National Hot Rod Assn., is one of 10 inductees into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame. Other drag racers in the hall include two-time funny car champion Frank Hawley and veteran crew chief Dale Armstrong.

FORMULA ONE

Jacques Villeneuve, who won the Indianapolis 500 and the Indy car championship only two years ago, has been installed as a 5-6 favorite to win the Formula One championship, which will begin March 9 in Melbourne, Australia. The British bookmaker Ladbrokes listed former champion Michael Schumacher, in a Ferrari, at 7-2, with Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Villeneuve’s Williams teammate, at 4-1. If you like Damon Hill to repeat as champion, he’s at 40-1 in his Arrows-Yamaha. Last year he drove a Williams.

IRL

Tony Stewart, driving John Menard’s Oldsmobile Aurora-powered G Force, continues to be the fastest of the Indy Racing League drivers as they prepare for the season’s next race, March 23 at Phoenix International Raceway. Last year’s Indy 500 pole-sitter became the first to surpass 200 mph on Texas Motor Speedway’s new 1.5-mile oval during a groundbreaking run on the new track. . . . Billy Boat of Glendale, Ariz., former West Coast midget champion and sprint car driver, tested Stewart’s car at Phoenix, reaching 164.384 mph. It was Boat’s first IRL appearance this year.

Motor Racing Notes

SPRINT CARS--The Sprint Car Racing Assn. returns to Perris Auto Speedway for a 30-lap main event Saturday night. When Mike Kirby, the 1993 California Racing Assn. champion, won last week’s SCRA feature, he became the first driver to win in both a sprint car and stock car on Perris’ half-mile dirt oval.

WILLOW SPRINGS--The opening race of the American IndyCar Series and the second round of the All-American Stock Car Challenge will share billing this weekend at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond. Ken Petrie will open defense of his IndyCar title for cars from 1994 and earlier against four-time champion Bill Tempero in 25-lap races Saturday and Sunday on the 2.5-mile road course. Jaques Lazier, brother of Indy 500 winner Buddy Lazier, is also entered. The stock cars will qualify Saturday and run a 25-lap main event Sunday.

TRUCKS--The NAPA 200, second of 26 NASCAR Craftsman Truck races, is scheduled for Saturday at Tucson Raceway Park. Boris Said III of Carlsbad, a winner in a BMW in the 24 Hours of Daytona road race, will be in a Ford co-owned by Ernie Irvan and Mark Simo for the 200-lap race on Tucson’s three-eighths-mile paved oval. The race will be shown live on ESPN2 at 12:30 p.m.