Zanardi Wins Survival Run

The second U.S. 500 wasn’t billed as a Demolition Derby, but it seemed to turn out that way.

Nine drivers led during the 500 miles Sunday, but six of them never made it to the finish line. One after another, the leader and the contenders dropped out--either because of hitting the wall or engine failure brought on by hot temperatures and high speeds.

At the end of CART’s longest race, Alex Zanardi, the talkative little Italian from Chip Ganassi’s Target team, was left.

Only one of the other 27 starters, Martin Blundell, was on the lead lap--and he was 31.737 seconds behind--when Zanardi cruised across the finish line in his Honda-powered Reynard. Only one of the six fastest qualifiers was around at the finish, and the one, Mauricio Gugelmin, was six laps back.

After three hours of 230-mph racing on the 18-degree banking of Michigan Speedway’s two-mile oval, only 10 cars were still running. And that may be a stretch. Two of them, the Toyotas of Max Papis and Hiro Matsushita, were nine laps in arrears in eighth and ninth places. Gualter Salles was 10 laps behind in 10th place.

“So many things were happening, when I got the big lead all I could think about was what happened last year,” Zanardi said, referring to the inaugural U.S. 500 in which he led 134 of the 250 laps before he dropped out because of mechanical troubles.

A former Formula One driver who won the Long Beach Grand Prix and the Cleveland race earlier this season, Zanardi was not without problems.

He started seventh, but after being penalized on Lap 41 for running over teammate Jimmy Vasser’s air hose, he fell back as far as 21st, at the time the last car on the lead lap.

“When I entered my pit box I realized I had gone too far,” he said of the penalty situation. “I knew I was going to get a penalty. Then I made things worse by stalling my engine. I was sitting there screaming at myself.”

Attrition involving others and a crew headed by Morris Nunn that kept making changes to Zanardi’s car at each pit stop helped get him back up front.

“A race of 500 miles is one of continuous adjustments,” Zanardi said. “By the end of the race, you hope you have the car the way you want it. When you do, and you are also lucky, you win. I have to thank Chip [Ganassi] and Mo Nunn. They kept making the decisions in the pits.

“I think it helped, too, to have the Honda engine. It seemed to suffer less from the heat than the other engines today.”

The victory moved Zanardi into the lead for the PPG CART World Series championship with five races remaining. He has 127 points to 121 for Paul Tracy, who finished fourth. Gil de Ferran, who was third, is also third in points with 108.

“Winning the championship is not a fixed goal of mine, but I am confident I will continue to be one of the main contenders,” Zanardi said. “My outlook is to concentrate on each race as it comes. I showed today that I can win on a superspeedway oval, even though I came from a road-racing background.”

Four of the final five races--Mid-Ohio, Road America at Elkhart Lake, Wis., Vancouver and Laguna Seca--are on road courses. The season ends with another 500-mile race, Sept. 28 at California Speedway.

For the first half of Sunday’s race, it didn’t pay to be in front.

Gugelmin, who had the day’s fastest lap of 232.581 mph, led for 34 laps before his engine quit. After his crew replaced the spark box, the Brazilian veteran returned, five laps behind.

Andre Ribeiro, another Brazilian, was next to lead. He set a blistering pace until he stopped for fuel. When he tried to resume racing, the car wouldn’t move. His gearbox had given out.

“I thought when Ribeiro was pulling away from the rest of us, there was no way anyone could catch him,” Zanardi said. “He was the fastest car I saw all day.”

Michael Andretti, after thrilling the crowd of 85,000 by charging from 19th to the lead in 75 laps, was next. He had just taken the lead with a daring pass of pole-sitter Scott Pruett when those plaintive words so familiar to Indianapolis 500 fans in the era of his father, Mario, came over the public address system: “Andretti is slowing on the backstretch.”

Andretti’s gearbox had also failed.

Dario Franchitti, a rookie from Scotland, and former Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal were next to succumb to the leader virus. Franchitti had the familiar gearbox failure.

Rahal dropped out when he smacked the wall while passing Dennis Vitolo, a refugee from the Indy Racing League.

“I was trying to lap Vitolo again and I went to the outside to get around him, but he just kept putting me higher and higher on the track and I hit the marbles,” Rahal said. “I knew I was going to hit [the wall] a ton. It’s a tribute to these cars that I could walk away from a crash like that.”

Rahal suffered a bruised hip but said it wouldn’t stop him from leaving for Scotland after the race to play golf today at Royal Troon Golf Club, site of the British Open.

Pruett, who led four different times, also crashed.

“I don’t know what happened,” Pruett said. “I was cruising along in sixth gear, not taking any chances, waiting for the end to make a move, and then the nose just washed out going into the second turn and I just ran out of room.”

The last race leader to drop out was another rookie, Patrick Carpentier of Canada. He held the point for 14 laps until the electronics quit working on his Reynard-Mercedes.

Zanardi averaged 167.044 mph, the speed slowed by six caution-flag periods for 55 laps.