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Experience counts Brack earns pole for inaugural CART race in Texas
FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Kenny Brack, the only CART driver with racing experience at Texas Motor Speedway, earned the pole for the inaugural Firestone Firehawk 600. Brack ran a qualifying lap at 233.447 mph Saturday to take his second CART pole, but insisted afterward that his five Indy Racing League races at the 1 1/2-mile high-banked track from 1997-99 gave him no edge. He was just a little bit faster than everybody else. "My knowledge of this place didn't give me any advantage," Brack said. "If it's a good car, it's fairly easy to figure out where to run. We'll see tomorrow if I know something more than the others." Of the 25 cars that ran qualifying laps Saturday, 17 of them ran better than 230 mph. Only one car was more than a second slower than Brack. Patrick Carpentier will start on the outside of the front row Sunday after a qualifying run of 233.345. Oriol Servia (232.978), who got just one qualifying lap in before blowing his engine, and Bryan Herta (232.663) will start in the second row. All four have Ford-powered cars. Brack's qualifying speed was in line with his 233.785 that was the fastest during practice Friday. But it was nearly three mph slower than the draft-aided speeds Paul Tracy and Tony Kanaan reached during a practice session Saturday morning. The high speeds were expected at Texas, CART's first race on a high-banked track built primarily for NASCAR. Texas is tighter, shorter and steeper than Michigan Speedway and California Speedway, CART's two fastest tracks. Unprecedented force and stress will be placed on the cars and the drivers because of the 24-degree banking at TMS, making this more a race of endurance than speed for 250 laps. "Definitely. Everybody's going flat out and there is not much really a driver can do except to get the car to the finish," said Adrian Fernandez, who starts 12th. "It's going to be a hard race, with a lot of laps and a lot of roughness on the track. A lot of things can happen." Gil de Ferran, the defending CART series champion, set a world closed course speed record with a 241.428 mph qualifying run at the 2-mile California Speedway oval last year. His 231.291 Saturday was good for seventh. "Oval racing is a different animal than road racing, but then Texas itself is a different animal than anything we've ever done before," de Ferran said. "It's going to be a very tough race." Brack, the 35-year-old Swedish driver, also earned the pole in the season-opening Monterrey Grand Prix in Mexico. He finished fifth there and is still looking for his first CART win, preparing to make his 23rd start for Team Rahal. "We want to really look for the checkered flag, but starting up front is obviously good," Brack said. "Hopefully, we won't get involved with any action at the start." Carpentier, the Canadian without a win in his five years in CART, was the second car on the track Saturday and his time held up as the second-fastest and his best start since earning a pole in Milwaukee in 1998. The flexible cast on his left wrist, from an injury sustained in a crash three weeks ago in the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach didn't seem to be a bother. "With the banking, the car kind of turns by itself going into the banking so you don't have to force it as much. It actually helps," Carpentier said. "It's less strong than before, but so far there are not too many problems." Carpentier doesn't think he could have been ready by now to run on a road course, but that's not a problem since Texas is the first of four straight oval races for CART. The Ford-powered front two rows will be followed by three Honda machines, Shinji Nakana, Alex Zanardi and de Ferran. CART season points leader Cristiana da Matta was in a backup Toyota car for qualifying after an accident in practice earlier Saturday, but still qualified 11th at 230.911. "It's not as bad as it looks," said da Matta, who has a win and a second-place showing in his first two races replacing Michael Andretti on the Newman-Haas team. "I'm probably the only guy in the field that didn't qualify with a qualifying motor and ran the same revs as I will in the race. "It won't be easy to start in 11th place here, but it is a long race so we can pace ourselves and work our way forward. This race will be tougher mentally than physically."
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