Returning to Champ Success Goes to Heart of Da Matta

By SHAV GLICK

April 8, 2005 12 AM PT

Disillusioned after being dropped by his Toyota Formula One team last year, Cristiano da Matta is back in Long Beach this week, hoping to revive his career in a Champ Car on the same streets of the Toyota Grand Prix where it took off with an Indy Lights win in 1998.

The little Brazilian went from his Long Beach triumph to the series championship, leading to a promotion to Champ Cars, where he won 11 races, seven poles and $4.6 million in four years and was chosen 2002 American driver of the year before following his childhood dream to Formula One, a dream that became a nightmare in midseason last year.

When practice starts today for Sunday’s 31st Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, Da Matta will be in a Ford Cosworth-powered Lola owned by PKV Racing, an amalgamation of Kevin Kalkhoven, one of the series owners; Dan Pettit, a venture capitalist partner of Kalkhoven’s, and Jimmy Vasser, the series’ only owner-driver.

“I think we will do well, maybe not win the first race, but be competitive with the top four or five,” said Da Matta, who at 5 feet 4 is the smallest of the Champ Car drivers. “We tested well and Long Beach is one of my two favorite street courses; the other is Surfers Paradise in Australia. Most street courses are small and tight, but Long Beach and Surfers have long straights and are wide enough in places to have some opportunities to pass.”

Da Matta also claims another advantage. He is living in the same apartment in Miami where he lived when he won the 2002 Champ Car title.

“It gave me good luck before, so I got it back,” he said.

The failures of his Formula One experience still rankle, but he says he has no ambitions of going back.

“There is nothing like a Formula One car, from a driver’s standpoint,” Da Matta said. “It is unbelievably sophisticated, so light, so much power, so much downforce, so much technology, it is so much fun to drive. From a sporting standpoint, however, I don’t think the series is so great.

“The way that series works, there is so much difference between cars that it is hard to measure yourself with other drivers. The rules are so open, every team builds its own car, some do their own engines, the aerodynamics are quite different, so it is difficult to tell who is doing a good job driving and who is not. So much depends on the car.

“When I left Toyota, I had other options in Formula One, but I did not want to stay there. I like it back here in CART, oops, I mean Champ Cars.... We all are driving the same equipment, the difference is in how the team prepares it and how you drive it. As a sport, with ovals, street and road courses, it is the best series as far as racing goes.”

After Da Matta won seven Champ Car races for Toyota in 2002, he was signed by the Japanese manufacturer to drive one of its Formula One machines in 2003, Toyota’s first Grand Prix season. Despite the team’s growing pains, he finished sixth in Spain and Germany, led 17 laps during the British Grand Prix and was F1 rookie of the year.

“We looked forward to 2004 with great expectations, but very simply, the 2004 car was slow, two- to three-tenths of a second slower than the 2003,” Da Matta said. “We could never figure out what was wrong. It was not for lack of trying. We tried thousands and thousands of combinations, but it was just slow....

“There was a lot of pressure from Japan to get results. All the technical people were under huge pressure. When I pointed out a couple of things, they took it like I was putting the blame on someone. I was only trying to help; after all, I was the one driving the car. But the more I tried to help, the worse it got. It got so that someone had to go. It was easy to point the finger at me, but it never got better after I left.

“They had four drivers -- me, Olivier Panis and two test drivers. No one was any quicker than me. Then Toyota put Jarno Trulli in the car. He had won at Monaco in a Renault, but he was no quicker than me, either. But after 12 races, I was gone.”

As soon as it was announced that Da Matta was out, his return to Champ Cars with his old Newman-Haas team seemed a certainty. But when the contracts were signed, it was with PKV, not Newman-Haas.

“For sure, my plans were to come back with Newman-Haas, but they would have to add a third car and that would mean more money and more people to hire in a hurry,” Da Matta said. “It just didn’t work out.”

Sebastien Bourdais and Bruno Junquiera, first and second in the series in 2004, are the Newman-Haas drivers.

“All the time I had been hearing from Jimmy [Vasser] about how they had added [team manager] Jimmy McGee to restructure the team and that it was a great opportunity for me, how great it would be to be teammates. Jimmy was one of the key factors in making up my mind to go with PKV.”

The first test will come today at 2 p.m. when Da Matta takes to the 11-turn, 1.97-mile course in the first round of qualifying.

Last Laps

Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield will hold its first NASCAR doubleheader Saturday night, featuring Grand National West and Elite Southwest series cars on the half-mile banked oval.... Hometown favorite Cory Kruseman will headline the entries for a VRA 360 sprint car main event Saturday at Ventura Raceway. Kruseman won the season opener.... Irwindale and Perris Auto Speedways will have multi-class stock car events Saturday night.

Mark Brannon, driving an ’01 Dallara Indy car, edged Eddie Nahir, in a ’95 Lola Indy car, on the final lap to win the Essex House Open Wheel Championship last Sunday at Willow Springs Raceway. Nahir was fast qualifier with a 1-minute 10.778-second run on the 2.5-mile road course.

Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell will drive the pace car, a Chevrolet Corvette convertible, for the Indianapolis 500 on May 29.

Among the 500 entries named this week are Jeff Bucknum, 38, son of former Indy and Formula One driver Ronnie Bucknum, and Jeff Ward, 43, former motocross champion.

This Week

CHAMP CAR WORLD SERIES

Toyota GP of Long Beach

* When: Today, qualifying, 2 p.m.; Saturday, qualifying, 2 p.m.; Sunday, race (Channel 4, 1 p.m.).

* Where: Streets of Long Beach (temporary road course, 1.968 miles, 11 turns).

* Race distance: 159.408 miles, 81 laps.

* 2004 winner: Paul Tracy.

* Next race: May 22, Monterrey, Mexico.

NASCAR NEXTEL CUP

Advance Auto Parts 500

* When: Today, qualifying (Speed Channel, noon); Sunday, race (Channel 11, 9:30 a.m.).

* Where: Martinsville (Va.) Speedway (oval, 0.526 miles, 12 degrees banking in turns).