It’s a Long Road to Victory Lane

If not for a few ounces of methanol, maybe enough to fill a beer can, Max Papis would already have reached the winner’s circle for the first time.

Sure, he dominated the U.S. 500 at Michigan Speedway, but running out of gas on the final lap, just one sweeping turn from the finish line, still makes him a non-winner.

It’s just a technicality, says his car owner.

“He won that Michigan race,” said Bobby Rahal, the owner-driver Papis replaced this season. “We [the crew] lost it for him. He was as dominant at Michigan as [anyone] I have ever seen.”

Over the last 10 races, only Dario Franchitti and Paul Tracy have outscored Papis. Over the last six races, he has been outscored by only Franchitti and Juan Montoya--by only six points--who are running 1-2 in the CART standings.

But Michigan, a 500-mile race similar to Sunday’s race at California Speedway, is Papis’ defining moment in 1999.

There, on July 25, Papis had a comfortable lead, then was sent out of the pits without enough fuel. There, he truly made a name for himself, not only for his dominance, but his hard luck as well. And for his character.

David Letterman, a team co-owner, showed a clip of the exasperating final turn--and Papis’ stoic post-race interview--on “The Late Show” the next night.

It was tough to miss Papis’ shrug, his thumbs-up, his smile. And Letterman’s admiration.

“There are people who don’t have food to eat,” Papis said of his misfortune--he finished seventh after coasting to the finish line. “That moment was very difficult, but I’m a happy person, very positive. I’m a very lucky person to do the job many people would like to do, to achieve a lot of dreams and goals in my life.

“Sure, the disappointment is there for five minutes, but after wiping away the tears, the person inside you is still there.”

All of which reinforces to Rahal that he made the right decision when he hired Papis, who helped develop the Toyota engine last season while driving for Cal Wells’ Rancho Santa Margarita-based Arciero-Wells Racing.

Papis, who has since moved from a Newport Beach house to a Miami Beach apartment, has 133 points in the CART Championship series standings, has moved from 10th place to fifth in the last three races, and has a chance to unseat Michael Andretti, who has 151 points, for fourth place.

“His enthusiasm has been a big lift for our team,” Rahal said. “This guy has so much charisma--he has more charisma in one finger than some drivers have in their whole body.”

Which may explain why his web site, https://www.maxpapis.com, has received 350 e-mail messages--he reads each one and occasionally responds--in the site’s first two months. All for a guy who hasn’t won a race.

“That’s one of those special things, knowing you have the support of people you have no relationship with,” Papis said. “Sometimes I call my mom in Italy and tell her, ‘You’ve done a very good job here. All the things you told me, they are inside me and everyone appreciates it.’

“These things are what it’s all about in life, being a good person, working to achieve your goals in life, whatever they are.

“Being able to feel.”

Papis will get his next chance to win that elusive first race Sunday.

“I kept telling people, you have not seen our real potential,” Papis said. “At Michigan, we made everything right. We were in our own league.

“I think it will happen again. I am hoping it will happen again at Fontana.”

Fellow driver Scott Pruett thought it would have happened often by now for Mad Max.

“I actually expected more from him,” said Pruett. “I thought he was going to be a dominant force this season, like Montoya. He ran a very good first race [fifth in Homestead, Fla.] and then he was up and down.

“Then in Michigan, he was clearly the car to beat . . . As a race car driver, you want to unload the transporter and have everyone feel you’re one of the guys to beat. With his performance at Michigan, he is the guy to beat [at Fontana].”

Fontana and Michigan are CART’s 500-mile races. The two-mile tracks have the same configuration, but with different banking. If things work here as they did at Michigan, Papis should already be ahead of the field when his No. 7 Reynard-Ford is unloaded.

“I go into every race thinking I’m the guy to beat,” Papis said. “Fontana, Cleveland, Japan, it doesn’t make any difference.

“Michigan is more a two-lane track, Fontana more a 1 1/2-lane track. We can apply a lot of things we learned in Michigan, but not everything.”

Of course, not everything has gone smoothly. The early season bumps in the road, Rahal said, were because “he had a very close relationship with the Arciero-Wells team and it took a little while for him to understand our team and our philosophies.”

There was also some bad luck. Papis was running fifth at Motegi City, Japan, when he got a flat tire five laps from the end and finished 16th. At Nazareth, Pa., he was running second but was penalized with a pit-stop drive-through after hitting a crewman and finished 13th. After losing the Michigan race on the last lap, he was knocked out of the Detroit road race on Turn 1 of the first lap.

But five times in the six races since Detroit, Papis has finished among the top five, the exception being Vancouver, where he crashed. He won his first CART pole at Chicago, an oval; earned his first podium finish at Laguna Seca, a road course, and had his best finish two weeks ago in Australia, on a temporary street course.

Papis had the fastest lap in the Australian race, more than half a second faster than the winner, Franchitti. That’s the kind of steam he carries with him into the season’s final race.

He leads the series in laps completed, 2,400 of 2,519 run; miles completed, 3,896 of 4,145, and races completed, 17 of 19. He is second in top-five finishes with 10, third in top-10 finishes with 13, and third in laps led with 217.

All that’s left is the cherry on top, which he hopes to achieve Sunday with his first champ car victory.

“What I’m proud of is that all the work going on at the beginning of the year that maybe I could see but outsiders couldn’t see, now everyone can see,” Papis said.

Said Rahal: “He has been everything I expected. I know he is a winner.”

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O.C. Connection

The four drivers who will race Orange County-based cars at Sunday’s Marlboro 500 in Fontana.

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No. Driver Home Team 22 Robby Gordon Orange Team Gordon 24 Scott Pruett Lake Tahoe, Nev. Arciero-Wells Racing 25 Cristiano da Matta Miami Arciero-Wells Racing 36 Raul Boesel Key Biscayne, Fla. All American Racing

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