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Parading Through The Streets of Long Beach

© Gary Presley

About 3 on the Excitement Meter

The CART FedEx Series hit the streets of Long Beach and went racing, more or less.

When the pole-sitter leads almost the entire race and pulls off a win, you have to think, though, what happened resembles a parade more closely than a race.

The CART gang got underway with a clear start under clear skies at Long Beach for the second race of the season. Helio Castroneves and Kenny Brack led the group off the starting grid, with Alex Tagliani getting the worst of the start when his left rear was clipped by an errant front wing.

Next on the casualty list was Michael Andretti, who parked his Team Green Honda with electrical problems.

For my money, the stars of the show were Paul Tracy, the one guy willing to edge toward those forbidding concrete barriers and attempt a pass, and Jimmy Vasser, who started the race trailing blue smoke from an over-filled oil reservoir, but then pulled off a third place finish.

But that's the story, more or less. It was, as noted, a parade, especially after Kenny Brack's Ford/Lola snapped a gearbox, and he dropped his chase of the pole-sitter.

One bright note, in my opinion, was another excellent run -- to a second-place finish -- by the new Newman-Haas driver, Cristiano da Matta.

The champ -- Gil de Ferran -- drove a workman-like race to finish third to this teammate, Castroneves.

Target-Chip Gannassi Racing's two rookies, Nicolas Minassian and Bruno Junqueira, started well back in the field but drove relatively good racings to finish 8th and 9th. Junqueira turned the fastest competition laps of the day, in fact.

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Reports from the Trenches

Castroneves holds off da Matta to win at The Beach
by Mark Cipolloni
April 8, 2001
Pole sitter Helio Castroneves grabbed the lead in the first corner and held off all challengers to win the 27th running of the Toyota GP of Long Beach. Castroneves held off Mexico race winner Cristiano da Matta by 0.534 sec. to win today's Toyota GP of Long Beach. Gil de Ferran completed a Brazilian 1-2-3 sweep taking third, followed by Canadian Paul Tracy and American Jimmy Vasser.
Full Report from Autoracing1.

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LONG BEACH SUNDAY NOTEBOOK
April 8, 2001
By Robin Miller

LONG BEACH, Cal.--Patrick Carpentier glanced at the media gathered around his transporter, looked down at the cast on his fractured left wrist and said: "You know, in my other life I must have killed somebody. That's all I can imagine."