IRL Tries to Topple CART

This is the day Indy Racing League drivers have been waiting for all year, a chance at redemption after their humiliation in last year’s Indianapolis 500, the centerpiece of the IRL season.

Invaders from Championship Auto Racing Teams, the rival open-wheel series, took the first five positions in the 2001 race.

The highest IRL finisher was A.J. Foyt’s ageless Chilean, Eliseo Salazar, who was seventh. Tony Stewart, from Winston Cup, was sixth.

When today’s $9-million race, the 86th Indianapolis 500, gets underway, it will have the fastest field in history with a 33-car average of 228.648 mph. It may also be the most competitive.

“More cars are capable of winning this race than ever before,” said team owner Chip Ganassi, who won the race in 2000 with rookie driver Juan Montoya of Colombia. “I would say there are 20 cars that could win without it being too big a surprise.”

Despite denials from both sides that there is an IRL-CART rivalry, that is the public perception. Some fans even insist that Roger Penske’s pair of Helio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran, who finished one-two last year, still count as CART drivers even though they are now in the IRL.

CART is here with eight drivers, headed by pole-sitter Bruno Junqueira, a 25-year-old from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, who drives a G Force-Chevrolet for Ganassi’s powerful Target team. Ganassi has blurred the lines between IRL and CART by fielding teams in both series, Junqueira and 1999 winner Kenny Brack in CART and motocross legend Jeff Ward in the IRL.

Four of the first six places in the front two rows are occupied by Brazilians, headed by Junqueira, who qualified with a speed of 231.342 mph. They are split evenly, Raul Boesel and Felipe Giaffone from the IRL and Junqueira and Tony Kanaan, the fastest rookie, from CART.

The two Penske Racing Brazilians, Castroneves and de Ferran, will start from the fifth row. Penske Racing, winner of 11 Indy 500s, has never had its highest-starting driver as far back as Castroneves, who is 13th.

He won last year from the 11th position, then celebrated by climbing the fence along with members of his crew.

Rookies have won the last two 500s, Montoya in 2000 and Castroneves last year. There is a strong crop of nine Indy newcomers, although it is hard to call Kanaan, a veteran of five CART seasons, or Scotsman Dario Franchitti, a runner-up for the CART championship in 1999, rookies.

Kanaan, in fact, was Junqueira’s instructor at a go-kart school in Brazil years ago.

“I’ve known Bruno since 1985,” Kanaan said. “I was his go-kart instructor for three years, and I regret that a lot right now. Yesterday I was talking with him and he said, ‘Remember all the hard times you used to give me when you were telling me what to do? So now you’re a rookie, you just shut up, and I will tell you what to do.’ He was so talented. I wish I had told him to quit so he wouldn’t be here now.”

Junqueira finished fifth last year, one of the CART drivers who so frustrated their IRL rivals.

What made it worse was that six of the IRL’s favorites, either because of nerves, over-anxiousness, lack of experience or that old standby, cold tires, crashed out of the race in the first 18 laps.

Scott Sharp, the pole-sitter and former IRL champion, didn’t make it through the first turn before spinning into the wall.

“I was going too fast and by the time I got to the corner there was nothing I could do,” Sharp said. “I’ve had nightmares about that for a year. I won’t make that mistake again.”

Like dominoes falling, Sarah Fisher, Scott Goodyear, former winners Buddy Lazier and Al Unser Jr. and 2001 champion Sam Hornish Jr. spun out of the race before some of the late arrivals had found their seats.

“That was a total embarrassment,” Hornish said. “It’s not going to happen again. I guarantee it.”

Hornish is pragmatic enough, however, to realize that Indy offers more opportunities for early trouble than anywhere else.

“What’s supposed to happen and what we were told to do is the guy on your left has the line into the corner,” said the 22-year-old from Defiance, Ohio, the youngest champion in open-wheel racing history.

“Indy is the only race where we start three wide. You’ll have cold tires and 35 gallons of fuel, and the car definitely handles differently than it does normally for the first 15 or 20 laps of the race. You can say and plan for what is going to happen, but whether it does or not is another thing.”

Six former winners are spread through the field, providing some depth to go with the nine rookies. They are Eddie Cheever Jr. (1998), Unser Jr. (1992, 1994), Castroneves (2001), Buddy Lazier (1996), Brack (1999) and Arie Luyendyk (1990, 1997).

Among the rookies, George Mack of Inglewood is one of the surprises. After failing to post qualifying speed laps during practice, the former kart driver reached 227.150 mph on “Bump Day” and will occupy the last row with former IRL champion Greg Ray, who replaced the injured Salazar on Foyt’s team, and Mark Dismore.

Mack has made the most of his opportunity. He took 552 laps in his 310 Racing G Force during the month, more than any other driver at the Speedway. And he wasn’t satisfied.

“I would have loved to have been able to run more miles, but as everybody knows, you just can’t do that with your race engine,” he said Thursday after Carburetion Day practice.

“We got some good data, but I guess the perfectionist in me wanted to find out more. It’s been incredible this month. I’m overwhelmed, just completely overwhelmed.”

Cheever and Robbie Buhl, a front-row starter between Junqueira and Boesel, will attempt to bring Nissan Infiniti its first Indy 500 victory.

Cheever won in an Olds Aurora-powered Dallara, and he scored Infiniti’s first series win in 2000 at Pikes Peak Raceway.

Cheever, one of two driver-owners in the race, will also be keeping an eye on his teammates, rookie Tomas Schecker from South Africa and CART driver Max Papis.

Buhl, in his seventh 500, has three finishes in the top 10, but much of his time this month has been spent coaching Fisher, his teammate in the Dryer & Reinbold Racing cars.

Fisher responded with the fastest four laps ever by a woman, 229.439 mph, bettering the 225.346 set by Lyn St. James in 1995.

“The one thing you have to keep in mind when talking about Sarah is that she’s only 21 years old and she knows an awful lot,” Buhl said. “Because she’s a racer, she’s not afraid to drive the car in. We’ve just got to teach her to be patient and say, ‘Hey, here’s what the car can do for you. Don’t try and carry it, get it to work for you.’ I think those are some of the things I have helped her with.”

She may have one surprising rooter today.

“If one of the my three guys can’t win, I think the greatest thing that could happen to Indy car racing would be if Sarah won,” Ganassi said.