De Ferran Wins Long Beach Pole

Starting on the pole in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach is nothing new to Gil de Ferran, but it’s something of a novelty to see one of Roger Penske’s red and white Marlboro cars there.

The smooth-driving Brazilian, a major cog in a complete overhaul of Penske’s once proud dynasty, earned his third Long Beach pole with a 104.969 mph lap Saturday around the 11-turn, 1.97-mile seaside course. Driving a Honda-powered Reynard, de Ferran took over the No. 1 spot midway thorough the qualifying session, lost it to Jimmy Vasser and then regained it in an exciting qualifying duel before an estimated 80,000.

The last time a Penske car started on the pole in Chris Pook’s beach party was 1994 when Paul Tracy and Al Unser Jr. filled the front row. De Ferran took the pole in 1996 and 1997 driving for Derrick Walker.

“I love this type of qualifying because it’s so nerve-racking,” de Ferran said. “No sooner would I get a good, clean run than someone would pop up with a quicker time and I had to do it all over again.

“All I had to do was calm myself down, concentrate hard and try to squeeze every ounce out of the car that I had. I touched the wall a couple times on my fast lap and that slowed me a little bit. It was a very exciting qualifying session.”

De Ferran’s quick lap and past mastery of Long Beach’s bends and swerves gives hope to Penske that he might finally land his 100th victory since fielding his first Indy car team in 1969. The last Penske car winner was Tracy at Milwaukee in 1998. Since then the team has had five drivers who failed to win, causing Penske to change drivers, chassis, engines and tires for 2000.

Although de Ferran has never won at Long Beach, he has been dominating at times. In 1996, he led 99 of the first 100 laps before losing the hose coupling his turbocharger and engine, causing him to lose power. He finished fifth. In 1997 he led the first 26 laps, but was sidelined because of a broken suspension.

He has his own idea of what today’s race may be like.

“Hopefully, I’m going to disappear into the distance and it will be a boring race to watch,” he said with a broad grin.

His late effort prevented Chip Ganassi’s Toyota-powered Lolas from taking the No. 1 starting position for today’s 82-lap, 161.376-mile race. Vasser was second fastest at 104.646 with teammate Juan Montoya, defending CART FedEx champion as well as last year’s Long Beach winner, third at 104.213.

Winning today should give the winner a lot of confidence toward this year’s championship and its $1-million bonus as the last four winners--all from Ganassi’s stable of drivers--have gone on to win the big prize, Vasser in 1996, Alex Zanardi in 1997 and 1998 and Montoya last year.

First-day leader Adrian Fernandez slipped to fourth, although he improved from 103.223 on Friday to 104.178.

“We thought we could improve the time more than we did,” Fernandez said. “I made a mistake on my fast lap. I don’t want to make a lot of excuses, but I didn’t sleep well last night. The car was better than yesterday but we couldn’t get much more out of it.”

Two drivers who are in the race only because regular team drivers were injured made impressive showings as subs.

Bryan Herta, replacing Shinji Nakano in Walker Racing’s car, qualified fifth after holding the top spot during the early laps. He did 104.170. Argentine rookie Norberto Fontana, who took over Herta’s regular spot with Forsythe Racing at the start of the season, qualified 18th.

“We’ve made the car better every session and we’re still getting to know one another, so I shouldn’t be disappointed,” said Herta, who had the fastest car in morning practice. “I really would have liked to make it an all-Honda front row. Gil’s time was pretty good, but I think we were just one of two runs away from being right there with him.”

Hondas have won the last 14 races on temporary street circuits, dating to the start of the 1998 season.

Memo Gidley, filling in for Patrick Carpentier, Forsythe Player’s top driver, made his first start on an oval track since 1998 and qualified 10th.

Max Papis, winner of the CART season opener at Homestead, Fla., will start sixth, with Kenny Brack, the Indianapolis 500 champion who is now Papis’ teammate on Bobby Rahal’s team, seventh.

One thing the drivers and teams appreciated was the sunny weather and a near-record Saturday crowd. Their last outing, last week at Nazareth, Pa., was snowed out.