By Any Name, Zanardi a Rather Easy Winner

Alex Zanardi, who would rather be known as Alessandro, had a feeling it was a good omen Friday when he went to pay his bill at a fancy Long Beach restaurant and found that an anonymous diner had already paid it.

Sunday, in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, winning was more gratifying for the Italian driver, and just about as easy.

In one of the more uneventful races of the 23 run through the streets of Long Beach, Zanardi drove his Honda-powered Reynard to a 3.8-second win over Mauricio Gugelmin of Brazil, who was followed by Scott Pruett, Al Unser Jr. and Parker Johnstone.

Zanardi gave some of the announced record crowd of 90,000 a thrill after taking the checkered flag when he spun a 360-degree “doughnut” on sweeping Shoreline Drive before continuing his victory lap.

“Only in America,” he said of his good fortunes.

Although Gil De Ferran prevented Zanardi from winning his seventh consecutive CART pole position, he didn’t keep him from dominating the one-hour, 46-minute race of 105 laps around the 1.586-mile temporary circuit.

“My crew did an unbelievable job, we won this race in the pits,” Zanardi said. “We’ve been waiting for this [victory] for too long. It was a true team effort today.”

It was the second consecutive Long Beach win for Chip Ganassi’s Target team, which won last year with Jimmy Vasser, who finished ninth this time.

Zanardi, who averaged 93.999 mph, also had the day’s fastest lap of 107.942 mph on lap 64 while dueling with De Ferran, who had the second-fastest lap, 107.779, on the same lap.

Four caution periods, for 19 laps, slowed the pace but surprisingly, none of the incidents involved accidents to more than one car at a time.

“After all the people hitting each other at Australia, all the drivers seemed to be on their best behavior here,” said Zanardi. “Australia was a slower circuit, so the cars were closer together. The closer you run, the more likely you are to get hit.”

Gugelmin said he felt his PacWest team was on the verge of winning after finishing less than four seconds behind Zanardi.

“My only problem was with the backmarkers,” Gugelmin said. “It seemed like we lapped some guys every five laps.”

De Ferran, who sat on the pole in Derrick Walker’s Reynard-Honda with a lap of 111.313 mph, might have posed more of a problem to the winner had he not broken his suspension when he swiped the concrete wall while running with the leaders on lap 93.

“It was completely my fault,” De Ferran said. “I got too close to Mauricio [Gugelmin] under braking, lost the front downforce, the front brakes locked up, and there was no way that I could stop the car.

“I apologize profusely to my team. I promise everyone who cares one thing, and that is that this will never happen again.”

A rash of flat tires also contributed to Zanardi’s cause--he was one of the few who had no problems.

Michael Andretti, on Goodyears, had his left rear tire shred not once but twice, and when a third tire lost air pressure, he called it a day.

“It’s part of the tire war,” Andretti said. “I don’t know what happened. Perhaps they’re getting cut on the car or the pressures were wrong or something. It happened three times, so I figured it was time to park it before I hit the wall and did some real damage to the car or someone else.”

Pruett, who was following Andretti at one point, said “the tire didn’t just go flat, it exploded. Michael did a great job controlling the car.”

Vasser was on Firestones, but he, too, lost ground with a flat early in the race.

“Paul Tracy hit me in the back at the start and I could feel the tire start to go down right away,” Vasser said. “By the eighth lap or so, I had lost so much air that the oversteer had become impossible and I had to come in.”

The unplanned pit stop put Vasser out of sync with his teammate, Zanardi, and the other leaders on stops. This enabled him to be leading as the race drew toward its close. However, when he finally pitted on lap 94, Zanardi took over.

“I knew the situation from the start, I knew Jimmy would have to make another stop,” Zanardi said. “Chip kept me advised.”

The win was Zanardi’s fourth since joining Ganassi 19 races ago and his fourth in the last 11 races.

Pruett’s third-place finish, coming after his win last Sunday in Australia, moved him into the CART PPG Cup lead after three races with 44 points to 41 for Zanardi and 35 for Andretti, winner of the season opener in Homestead, Fla.