Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

Castroneves win sets up title attack

Helio Castroneves took a dominant victory in the Honda Grand Prix of Monterey AT Laguna Seca and moved himself into contention for the CART Championship Series title

Castroneves and his Marlboro Team Penske team-mate Gil de Ferran repeated their Mid-Ohio one-two, a result that gives the latter the points lead with four races remaining.

Penske's dominance was not as crushing as it had been at Portland and Lexington, but the red and white cars still had enough of an advantage to make the battle for the lead less than thrilling. In spite of this, Castroneves managed to produce his traditionally exuberant victory celebration, climbing the spectator fences, jumping on the pit wall and hugging absolutely everyone in sight. In fact, watching the effervescent Brazilian hurl himself around victory lane was significantly more exciting than watching the second half of the race...

Castroneves had been fastest in both qualifying sessions and the warm-up, so it was no surprise when he led team-mate de Ferran into turn one at the start of the race. Behind them, Dario Franchitti held third while Juan Montoya stormed from sixth to fourth with a characteristically brave move around the outside of Bryan Herta and Kenny Brack.

The top four ran in close company at first, before Castroneves put on a brief charge and put his rivals back in their place, opening a four second lead over de Ferran before the first pit stops. The leader got away without difficulty, but his team-mate was briefly blocked by Michel Jourdain Jr's Bettenhausen Lola and nearly had contact with Franchitti as he fended off the Scotsman in the pit exit.

This delayed them both and helped Montoya leap from fourth to second, despite having been forced off the road and nearly into the wall as he tried to lap Alex Tagliani on his 'in lap'.

Suddenly Penske looked under pressure. Montoya left de Ferran and Franchitti's battle behind and began to close down the 4s gap between himself and the leader Castroneves. Traffic played a part as the frontrunners encountered a group of backmarkers fighting hard to pass the struggling Tagliani, whose engine had gone sick.

Scything through the field more efficiently than his rival, Montoya had got to within a second of Castroneves only for the yellows to come out after two separate incidents in turn six. Former series leader Roberto Moreno had put his Patrick Racing Reynard into the wall after spinning during a fierce battle for 14th with Max Papis. A few seconds later, Jourdain Jr and Tagliani came together at the same place, right in front of the leaders.

"We came up the yellows for Moreno's spin and suddenly Michel Jourdain's trying to pass me under caution," said Tagliani. "It wasn't very smart..."

The leaders all pitted, and this stop brought disaster for Montoya as his rear jack suddenly failed. The Lola dropped down onto the tarmac and had to be lifted using a manual jack to allow the service to be completed.

There was no such drama for the Penske team though, as Castroneves and de Ferran resumed their one-two formation behind the pace car. Franchitti was back up to third, ahead of Newman-Haas team-mates Michael Andretti and Christian Fittipaldi, neither of whom stopped under the yellow.

In theory, the other frontrunners would have to stop again because the incident had occurred with nearly 40 laps still to run, but the yellow was extended as the officials tried to put some of the lapped traffic further down the queue. This gave everyone else the time to conserve enough fuel to make it to the end without too much stress. Fittipaldi, Patrick Carpentier and Paul Tracy all pitted for an extra top-up before the restart as a result, but Andretti stayed out and would drop to the tail of the field when he finally pitted on lap 61.

The laps ran out in rather tame fashion, as Castroneves led de Ferran, Franchitti, Herta, Brack and the delayed Montoya. All six ran in close proximity, but the need to be careful with fuel mileage meant that no-one was going to try to do anything daring in the closing stages.

Behind this group, Mauricio Gugelmin finished seventh after a competitive and reliable run for PacWest. The best battle of the race was behind him, as Jimmy Vasser, Oriol Servia, Patrick Carpentier and Paul Tracy fought for eighth. Servia and Tracy were the men on the move and started the penultimate lap eighth and ninth, only for the Canadian to spin at turn two when a move on his Spanish rival failed. He rejoined 12th, then gained a place when Servia ran out of fuel on the last lap.

That left Vasser and Carpentier eighth and ninth ahead of Fittipaldi, Tracy and Adrian Fernandez. Andretti again failed to score as he found himself stuck behind Mark Blundell in 14th place.

Cristiano da Matta benefited from a great first pit stop to move into seventh place, then spun it all away and finished 15th. His fellow Brazilian Tony Kanaan also had a bad day, dropping from 12th to 23rd thanks to a clutch problem at his first stop then exiting the fray with brake problems.

Kanaan may have been miserable, but his friend Castroneves was suitably ecstatic. His third victory of 2000 moves him to within 29 points of the championship lead, and given the incredibly unpredictable nature of this season's title fight, he is still in contention with four races remaining on the schedule.

"It's so good, the team did a hell of job," he gushed as he paused for breath in-between his celebrations. "It's what they deserve because we've all worked a lot this season and this is the result."

Castroneves dedicated the win to the late Gonzalo Rodriguez, who lost his life in a practice accident at Laguna Seca last season. The young Formula 3000 star from Uruguay was having his second outing with Penske at the time and the team withdrew from last season's race out of respect to his memory, making today's result especially poignant.

"I'm very proud to be here," said Helio. "I want to dedicate this to Gonzalo. Wherever he is, I'm sure he's still shining..."



1 Helio Castroneves Penske Reynard-Honda 83
laps
2 Gil de Ferran Penske Reynard-Honda + 0.954s
3 Dario Franchitti Green Reynard-Honda +
2.642s
4 Bryan Herta FCR Reynard-Ford + 4.419s
5 Kenny Brack Rahal Reynard-Ford + 5.158s
6 Juan Montoya Ganassi Lola-Toyota + 7.301s
7 Mauricio Gugelmin PacWest Reynard-Mercedes
+ 14.814s
8 Jimmy Vasser Ganassi Lola-Toyota + 20.897s
9 Patrick Carpentier Forsythe Reynard-Ford
+ 21.609s
10 Christian Fittipaldi Newman-Haas Lola-Ford
+ 22.292s
11 Paul Tracy Green Reynard-Honda + 23.222s
12 Adrian Fernandez Patrick Reynard-Ford +
23.504s
13 Mark Blundell PacWest Reynard-Mercedes +
25.312s
14 Michael Andretti Newman-Haas Lola-Ford
+ 26.181s
15 Cristiano da Matta PPI Reynard-Toyota +
26.674s
16 Max Papis Rahal Reynard-Ford + 44.851s
17 Oriol Servia PPI Reynard-Toyota DNF
18 Tarso Marques Coyne Swift-Ford + 1 lap
19 Memo Gidley Della Penna Reynard-Toyota + 1
lap
20 Luiz Garcia Jr Arciero PRG + 1 lap
21 Alex Barron Coyne Lola-Ford + 2 laps

Retirements:

Tony Kanaan Mo Nunn Reynard-Mercedes
Alex Tagliani Forsythe Reynard-Ford
Michel Jourdain Jr Bettenhausen Lola-Mercedes
Roberto Moreno Patrick Reynard-Ford
Shinji Nakano Walker Reynard-Honda

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article Sunday warm-up: Penske in front again...
Next article De Ferran takes over championship lead

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe