Gurney’s Racers Speed to Qualifying Times

Dan Gurney’s Santa Ana-based All American Racers had the kind of afternoon they hoped for at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, showing marked improvement from Friday’s morning practice to turn in their best qualifying performances of the PPG CART World Series season.

P.J. Jones of Rolling Hills covered the 1.59-mile street course in 53.477 seconds (106.767 mph). Juan Manuel Fangio II of Miami covered it in 53.561 seconds (106.600). They tentatively qualified 20th and 21st in the 31-car field.

The day’s leading qualifier was Gil de Ferran (51.293 seconds, 111.313 mph).

Fangio improved 1.372 seconds over his morning time. Jones was 1.029 better than his practice time.

It was especially notable for Fangio, who spent much of his 30-minute practice session in the pits trying to correct rough handling.

“We definitely have a direction,” Fangio said. “We will make a few changes for tomorrow that I think will improve the car.”

Jones, too, was pleased.

“It was a pretty decent qualifying session for us--we didn’t have any mistakes or anything,” Jones said. “Once we get more horsepower, we should be even higher than this.”

Gurney said he expects to receive a more competitive powerplant for his Castrol-Jockey Toyotas, the RV8B, by the May 24 Motorola 300 in St. Louis. His teams are using last year’s RV8A, which isn’t competitive on the straightaways with the frontrunners.

“We know that when we get the right combination together, we’ll be a lot further up front,” Gurney said. “Reality is that this is where we are right now.”

As good as qualifying was for AAR, it was disappointing for Arciero-Wells.

Their No. 1 car, the MCI Toyota driven by Newport Beach’s Max Papis, lost oil pressure during qualifying. After clocking the 22nd-best practice time (54.307), it was 26th in qualifying (54.428 seconds, 104.902 mph)--his worst of the season.

Papis is the only Toyota running the RV8B powerplant.

“Today went quite well for us today in practice,” Papis said. “Unfortunately, in qualifying we couldn’t prove anything because we only did a few laps.”

San Clemente’s Hiro Matsushita suffered a gear box problem on the first lap and didn’t post a qualifying time in the Panasonic Duskin Toyota.

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Other Indy car drivers with Orange County connections fared better in their more well-established programs.

Bryan Herta, who attended UC Irvine for three years, qualified fifth (52.069) for Team Rahal. Paul Tracy, whose Marlboro Team Penske crew chief is Anaheim native Jon Bouslog, qualified sixth (52.078).

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The afternoon qualifying for the KOOL/Toyota Atlantic Championship was turned into a practice session after the morning session was effectively wiped out by oil on the track. Qualifying will be at 11:10 a.m. today in one 25-minute session, 45 cars vying for 36 spots.

“You just have to hope everyone’s done their job and you make it through the session,” said Jeret Schroeder, whose 1:02.507 was 13th in practice.

Schroeder’s teammate at Arciero-Wells, Leo Parente of Redondo Beach, was 20th (1:03.366).

Local drivers competing are Irvine’s Dan Vosloo (32nd, 1:06.175), Huntington Beach’s Gary Peterson (34th), Fountain Valley’s Marcelo Gaffoglio (35th), Orange’s Rick Ferguson (36th) and Laguna Hills’ Mark Tague (39th).