Neves Needs One Turn to Win in Indy Lights

Helio Castro Neves’ race lasted about a quarter-mile, from the starting line to the first turn.

Then Sunday’s PPG Firestone Indy Lights race turned into a Long Beach parade and Neves was its drum major.

He was never headed or threatened in the 40-lap run that was shortened from the scheduled 47 laps because the one-hour time limit was imposed. There were four caution periods, the product of five wrecks--one a double header, on opposite sides of the 1.59-mile, eight-turn course--and one of them caused Neves his only anxious moment. It came on Lap 29, when Luiz Garcia Jr. and Hidecki Noda tangled.

“I could see the flagman waving the yellow [caution], and I thought, ‘Just squeeze through,’ ” Neves said. He did, barely, between the cars and the wall and continued on around without further incident, averaging 72.607 mph.

“It was close,” he said.

To the wreck, maybe. Not really to Cristiano Da Matta, who was second, 1.067 seconds behind Neves, his Brazilian countryman.

Mark Hotchkis of Pasadena was third, 1.65 seconds behind Neves, and retained his series point leadership. He has 27 points, one more than teammate Chris Simmons, who was fourth Sunday.

The difference in the race was setup and a track without a lot of room to pass.

Indy Lights are supposedly identical Lola chassis/Buick engine cars. Lola/Buicks, they are. Identical, they aren’t.

“The chassis are identical, and the engines are identical but the [team] engineers are different,” Da Matta said. “The cars are set up differently. On cold tires on the restarts [after the wrecks], my car was running better than the other guys behind me, but not so good as Helio’s.”

Da Matta had taken over second place on the second lap, when David Empringham locked up the brakes on his car on the hairpin turn that exits onto the main straightaway and caused the first caution period.

“I made some mistakes that were very uncharacteristic, and I’m not proud of my drive,” said Empringham, who won this race a year ago by starting second and taking the lead on the first turn.

Neves remembered.

Starting from the pole alongside Empringham, Neves’ main mission was to get through the first turn first, and when he did, the race was over.

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In Sunday’s other support events--the twin 20-lap Super Touring races--Australian Neil Crompton’s Honda started on the front row, took the lead and pulled away from the field in both runs, averaging 85.324 mph in winning the first over Dominic Dobson by 13.13 seconds; and 85.777 mph in winning the second over Randy Pobst by 3.35 seconds.

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It probably was the most compelling Sunday and it belonged to Newport Beach’s Max Papis.

Unfortunately.

Papis, driving the Rancho Santa Margarita-based Arciero-Wells/MCI Reynard Toyota, cut a striking image on the backstretch of the 1.586-mile street course--where speeds reach more than 180 mph--as he scrambled from his car and put out an engine fire with nearby water buckets.

“I felt hot, looked in my rear-view mirror, saw the fire and jumped from the car,” said Papis, who was unhurt. “I was not on fire, but it was close. I hit my ejector button and I ran out of the car as fast as I could.”

Papis, in his first full season in the PPG CART World Series Championship, said he had a car fire once before when racing Formula 1, but he wasn’t in the kind of danger he experienced with Sunday’s oil fire behind the cockpit.

“It was the first time for me that I’ve had a fire in the car,” Papis said, “and it was not a good feeling.”

Nor was the feeling too good about the performance of the Toyota RV8B in what was essentially a home race for the team and its sponsors.

Team owner Cal Wells said there were six “developmental issues” with Toyota’s premier engine, the last causing plumes of smoke that ended Papis’ day on Lap 40, a lap behind the leader. At Surfer’s Paradise in Australia a week earlier, there were seven such incidents that brought the car to a standstill. Both were street circuits.

Papis, who started 26th, finished 25th in the 27-car field. He averaged 89.134 mph. It was the first of three races this season he didn’t finish.

His teammate, San Clemente’s Hiro Matsushita in the Panasonic Duskin Reynard Toyota, completed his first race of the season; he finished 20th, the last of the running cars, completing 96 of 105 laps with an average speed of 85.361 mph.

Notes

The other hometown team fared better as Santa Ana-based All-American Racers team owner Dan Gurney celebrated his 66th birthday with mixed results.

P.J. Jones of Rolling Hills finished 16th, completing his first race of the season in the Castrol-Jockey Reynard Toyota.

Jones (91.876 mph) was two laps behind winner Alex Zanardi (93.999 mph). He ran as high as eighth. It matches his second-best finish in two years with AAR.

Gurney’s other driver, Juan Manuel Fangio II (Miami), retired after 28 laps because of an electrical failure. He finished 26th (60.639 mph).

Laguna Niguel’s Shigeaki Hattori, who started 11th in the PPG Firestone Indy Lites Championship, finished ninth (98.574 mph), 1.034 seconds behind race winner Helio Castro-Neves (100.366).

Chris Bingham, who drives for Lake Forest-based Leading Edge, finished 21st in the 27-car field.

Newport Beach’s Hank Thorp served as the chief steward for his 100th Indy Lites race.