All of a Sudden, Pruett Is Leader of CART Pack

Alex Zanardi and Jimmy Vasser are the hot drivers in the hot cars in the new CART racing season, Gil De Ferran continues to give indications that he will be a racing superstar someday soon and the old guard--Al Unser Jr., Michael Andretti and Bobby Rahal--still commands respect. So where does that leave Scott Pruett?

Out in front, actually.

Quietly, the veteran driver--at 37, he’s two years older than either Andretti or Unser--has moved into the lead in the CART PPG World Series standings. His third-place finish Sunday in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, hot on the heels of his uphill victory a week ago in Australia, gave him 44 points, three more than Long Beach winner Zanardi has in the runner-up spot.

And going back to the final race of last season, at Laguna Seca, Pruett has been third or better in three of CART’s last four races.

All of which means?

Nothing definitive at this early juncture--Pruett’s eyes widened in mock horror when someone asked if this might be his season--but it is beginning to look as though the team put together in 1994 by car owner Pat Patrick, who had been away from racing for several seasons, might be hitting its stride. And if that stride is as long as the one stepped off by the Patrick teams of the ‘80s, Pruett’s quiet days may be over.

He likes his chances.

“I think we’re going to be contenders all season,” he said. “I’m not surprised to be [leading the standings]. We were right there last year. Unfortunately, we had a lot of engine problems but over the winter, Ford and Cosworth really stepped up their efforts. I feel now we’re on a par with the rest of the engine manufacturers.

“The biggest thing was when Pat decided to make the change from Lola [chassis] to Reynard in January. That actually put us a little behind because since we started testing, it’s been all Lola. As we continue to learn about the car we’ll learn how to make it better.

“We now have an engine-car package that’s running very, very consistent.”

Consistency was the watchword for Pruett on Sunday. He couldn’t run quite as fast as Zanardi, runner-up Mauricio Gugelmin or early leader De Ferran. But after starting fourth, he finished third, progress in anybody’s book.

“Michael [Andretti] lost two tires virtually right in front of me and there was debris going everywhere but that was probably the worst of it,” Pruett said of his race, describing it as otherwise uneventful.

“But we ran hard all day. The thing is, you’re on the edge here most of the time, especially when you’re up underneath a guy. I was sort of challenging [Gugelmin] for a little while but I couldn’t quite keep with him. At the same time, I could pull away from the guys behind me so I was just kind of in a position by myself.”

If that made it appear that Pruett was motoring sedately, he begs to differ.

“It was a pretty aggressive race,” he said. “I ran hard the whole race, used the brakes hard every lap, I was very aggressive with the turns. Because there’s always that challenge from behind. I think the biggest issue was just traffic today. I got held up toward the end by just a mass of guys and lost probably four or five seconds.”

A week ago in Australia, Pruett was on the other side of that equation, holding off a charging Greg Moore for the victory after attrition had thinned the field. What made that win impressive, though, was that he scored it in teammate Raul Boesel’s car. His own had developed an engine problem in practice so, as the team’s lead driver, he was given Boesel’s to qualify.

“We’re focused this year.” Pruett said. “We’re focused on trying to finish every race in the top five. Last year we fell out of, I don’t know, a lot of races. Unfortunately, we had a lot of engine issues but this year, it looks like those are gone.

“We still have a lot to learn about the Reynard and we’re going up against teams that have years of experience with them, so for us as a team, our learning curve is very steep. The more we learn about the car, the faster we’ll go.”