Emerson Fittipaldi Q&A

It was a difficult experience and I learned a lot. But now is the perfect time to get into Champ Cars. I've wanted to do it for the last two years. Now I think CART has reached the bottom and is coming back. There were so many bad rumours about CART, but people are going to be surprised. There are a lot of young, hard chargers and it will be a great show to watch.



"The street races get more people than other series and the TV coverage is very good. It's the most competitive series in the world - for any driver who wants to enjoy racing, have fun and have a future, this is the series because you can go to Formula 1. Champ Car is now global and it has a very good track record for putting people in F1 - look at Villeneuve and Montoya. And CART is a lot more fun that Formula 1."



"The new TV package is very good and I hope we can race there in 2004 on a street circuit. Chris Pook's vision is street circuits and I believe in that philosophy. Chris's leadership is the reason I started my team, because I believe Champ Car is going to come back strong. It's just a question of time.



I've known him for two or three years. Actually, it's a small world because the son of my manager when I was in F1 is Tiago's manager now. He did very well in the French F3 championship in 2001, then he had a tough season of F3000 last year. All the tracks were new and he didn't have the right engineer, so he struggled. But he won many races in F3.



A modest start. I told Tiago to finish the first race and just run to get experience. This is a learning years for us. We have a new driver, and we want to start 2004 strong with two cars and our own infrastructure.