Penske Power

All Brazil, all the time -- with Team Penske's Gil de Ferran the winner - the podium at the latest race in the USA's top open wheel series was filled with competitors from the South American nation.

Roberto Moreno finished second with a two-stop strategy, and Christian Fittipaldi was third.

You gotta wonder about CART and Portland International Raceway officials. The chicane at the end of the front stretch - called the Festival Corners - causes more problems, I'd guess, than would occur if the cars were allowed to enter the former Turn 1 unrestricted.

This year you could almost hear the drivers singing "Brack in the IRL" - think of the Beatles classic "Back in the USSR" - when the Swedish-born CART rookie took a hard inside line in the chicane after the green flag fell. You could see what was going to happen, and the best you could hope for was that your contest picks - your favorite - would make it through the carnage with a complete car.

Once the survivors made it around the track for the re-start the questions became - Would Montoya break? Would Paul Tracy run over a crewman? Would teams choose a two-stop or three-stop pit strategy to cope with the extended distance of the race?

Montoya didn't break, but Tracy did. He suffered rear suspension damage in the first lap chicane incident which resulted in a collapse of the left rear as the race approached the end.

This dropped Tracy to third on the season point list, trailing Mr. Consistency, Roberto Moreno.

You gotta believe, though, the big loser for the day - other than maybe Patrick Carpentier, who was fined $10,000 for failing to heed the passing flag in the latter stages of the race - is Helio Castroneves. The de Ferran teammate had sat on the pole and led a good number of laps before succumbing to gearbox problems - and running out of fuel - in the last laps.

A check of the Top Ten shows a nice mix of power plants, but nine - count 'em -- nine of the ten were riding Reynard chassis, the lone exception being Fittipaldi's Lola.

Complete race results and excellent on-the-spot analyses are available from Robin Miller and Auto Racing 1 News

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