Moore Outruns Disaster This Time

There was no disappointment for Greg Moore at the end of this year’s Marlboro Grand Prix. There was a checkered flag this time.

The 23-year-old Canadian, who dominated last year’s Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami only to come up short because of a broken airjack, drove a strategic race Sunday and pulled away to what looked to be an easy victory in the CART season-opening race at Homestead, Fla.

It was almost another unhappy ending, though, as Moore came dangerously close to running out of fuel.

“On the back straightaway the [fuel] light came on,” Moore said. “I knew I had a half-gallon left, and that was enough.”

Michael Andretti, winner of the race for the last two years, finished second and blamed his finish on a mistake he made that shut off his engine on his final pit stop.

Moore, driving a Reynard-Mercedes for the Player’s Forsythe team, started from the pole on the 1 1/2-mile oval for the second straight year and led until lap 59, during the first round of green-flag pit stops. He didn’t regain the top spot until a group of cars that had moved to the front with a fuel-stretching strategy, including Dario Franchitti, finally had to pit under caution on lap 114.

Moore, who led 96 of the 150 laps--including the final 37--inherited the lead and pulled away from Andretti. He beat Andretti’s Swift-Ford to the finish line by 1.110-seconds--about six car-lengths. The winner averaged 136.671 mph as he collected $100,000.

In lap one, rookie Naoki Hattori, making his CART debut, slid into former series champion Al Unser Jr. and the two cars slammed into the wall.

Unser came away from the hard hit with a fractured right ankle and a torn ligament to his left knee. Hattori had a compound fracture of the large bone in his lower left leg. Both were airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Both were scheduled for surgery.

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Shortly after Jeff Burton crashed while leading the TranSouth 400 and his day appeared over, rain saved the day and he walked away the winner at Darlington, S.C.

Burton, who had battled Jeremy Mayfield and Jeff Gordon throughout much of the $1.8 million race, stood near his badly damaged car, and motioned to the angry sky to keep the wet stuff falling.

Moments later, his prayers were answered. NASCAR decided it could not restart the race after 164 of 293 scheduled laps. The race had been halted earlier for nearly three hours.

It was Burton’s second victory this year and seventh of his career, and gave him the lead in the Winston Cup points race. Mayfield was second in a 1-2 Ford finish, followed by the Chevrolet of Gordon.

Burton was coming up on lapped traffic exiting the fourth turn three laps after rain began to fall for the second time in the race. Suddenly, the cars slowed, and Burton hit a spinning Jerry Nadeau and then the front stretch wall.

Burton’s right front wheel was turned at a 30-degree angle, and the tire flat. But he managed to limp around--the right front smoking badly--behind the pace car for a lap until the red flag ended the race after 164 of 293 scheduled laps. Burton’s purse was $161,900.

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John Force scored his 72nd career NHRA Funny Car victory at the Mac Tools Gatornationals at Gainesville (Fla.) Raceway.

Force set national records for elapsed time and speed (4.799 seconds at 324.05 mph) before defeating Cory Lee in the final round. The victory was worth $75,000.

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Seating at Lowe’s Motor Speedway, the nation’s second-largest auto track formerly known as Charlotte Motor Speedway, will grow in the next eight years by 62% from 157,000 seats to just over 255,000.