|
|
 |
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
CART Notebook Michigan's CART finale draws few fans
BROOKLYN, Mich. (AP) -- CART's last race at Michigan International Speedway displayed everything that has been positive and negative about the event in recent years. Exciting racing. But not many fans in the stands. Patrick Carpentier won the Harrah's 500 on Sunday by 0.243 seconds just ahead of Dario Franchitti and Michel Jourdain Jr. -- before an estimated crowd of 40,000 in the 130,000-seat facility. "What I'll miss most here is the racing, it's unbelievable," Carpentier said. "The most disappointing thing is that we don't fill up the grandstands." In 1996, about 100,000 fans flocked to MIS to attend the U.S. 500 on the same day the Indy 500 was run. Since then, attendance has steadily declined while the races have continued to be wildly competitive. There were 61 official lead changes Sunday at the finish line -- one short of the series record -- and a total of 167 on the track in the 500-mile event. Since the Handford Device was introduced in 1999, the record for lead changes was 62. Last year, there were 52 at MIS. The previous two CART races at Michigan are among the three closest finishes in CART history. In 1999, Tony Kanaan edged Juan Montoya by 0.032 seconds for the second-closest finish. Last year, Montoya beat Michael Andretti by 0.040 seconds.
Wild, wild MISThe three divers who led the most laps -- Max Papis (83), Memo Gidley (67) and Kenny Brack (55) -- didn't earn a point because they didn't finish in the top 12. Papis and Brack crashed on lap 233 and did not finish at all. "I'm OK, but I'm hurt inside," Papis said before hurrying away from the medical center. Gidley started 16th and moved into the lead on lap 36, but later a pit-speed violation dropped him two laps down. He battled back to get on the lead lap toward the end of the race, but a mechanical problem dropped him to a 14th-place finish. "We were clearly the fastest car out there all day," Gidley said. "It was so fast that it was almost too hard to slow down. You need to have some luck sometimes in order to win races and that was the case today." Ticked TracyPaul Tracy got into a bad mood early in Sunday's race when his team had trouble getting fuel into his car on more than one occasion. "It would be nice if I didn't lose a lap on every pit stop," Tracy screamed at his crew over the radio. Tracy did manage a seventh-place finish, but he still wasn't happy. "Unfortunately, our regular fueler broke a bone in his foot earlier this week and we had to put a new guy in there for the race," Tracy said. "It takes a lot of getting used to and we should have given him more practice." Spark plugsCarpentier's win gave the Player's Forsythe team its first win in 41 events, dating to the season-opening race in 1999 when the late Greg Moore won at Homestead. ... Jourdain's third-place finish marked his first trip to the podium in 91 races. His best results previously were a pair of seventh-place finishes. ... Michael Andretti, Alex Zanardi, Tony Kanaan, Shinji Nakano, Jimmy Vasser, Gil de Ferran and Adrian Fernandez did not finish the race because of mechanical or electrical problems, while Christian Fittipaldi's race ended after hitting a wall.
| |||||||||||||||||||||
