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Tears of joy CART's oldest driver takes heartfelt win in Vancouver
Updated: Sunday September 02, 2001 11:58 PM
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) -- As the tears began flowing five laps from the end of the Vancouver Molson Indy, Roberto Moreno gave himself a little pep talk. "I thought, `No, you don't do this or you'll put the car in the wall and all your hard work will go away.'" The tears dried -- at least until the checkered flag waved -- and Moreno, who passed Gil de Ferran for the lead nine laps from the end, held on to become the ninth driver to win in 14 CART races this season. Moreno, a 42-year-old Brazilian, the oldest driver in the FedEx Series, thanked his team over and over with with a choked voice after crossing the finish line nearly 5 seconds -- a full straightaway -- ahead of de Ferran, the defending series champion and the new points leader. "It was a difficult race today," said the emotional Moreno, who worked hard to hold back more tears after getting out of his Patrick Racing Reynard-Toyota following a tire-smoking celebration on his cooldown lap.
Moreno and de Ferran passed each other several times during the race, but the last pass was decisive. "I was lucky he came out of one of the corners a little sideways," Moreno said. "I got up beside him and there was no way I was going to lift." De Ferran, who came into the race trailing Marlboro Team Penske teammate Helio Castroneves by 11 points and Kenny Brack by six, now leads by five on both Castroneves and Brack with six races remaining. Michael Andretti, who finished third, moved back into the title race, trailing de Ferran by just 13 points. Most of the race day crowd of 63,385 was disappointed when Canadian driver Alex Tagliani, who started from the pole and led the first 69 laps of a scheduled 100-lap race on the 1.781-mile, 12-turn temporary street circuit, was eliminated from the race by an engine failure. The race went only 98 laps because of a 2-hour, 10-minute time limit imposed by CART. As smoke erupted from the rear of Tagliani's car, Team Player's teammate and countryman Patrick Carpentier, who was second, was making his final pit stop, giving the lead to Moreno, who was then able to make his last stop under caution. Both Moreno and de Ferran were behind Mauricio Gugelmin for the restart on lap 80, but de Ferran was able to get past both of them to take the lead. It stayed that way until Moreno took advantage of the mistake by de Ferran on lap 92. "I was pushing hard to stay ahead of him," de Ferran said. "Unfortunately, I made a small mistake and hit the inside wall and had to get out of the throttle for a moment. that was it." Moreno, whose only other CART victory came on July 2, 2000, in Cleveland, said, "I started crying in the car after the checker and I almost lost it into the wall. This is wonderful." When asked about rumors that he is driving to keep his job, Moreno said, "Don't say that. I'm a professional race driver and our team is getting better and better. It takes time to get everything together."
The race was particularly disappointing for Castroneves, who wound up 18th despite running to the end, and Tagliani, who fell to 23rd. Castroneves lost one lap after being hit from behind by Brack at the start, then lost two more laps when his car stalled later in the race. He ran some of the fastest laps in the race but never made up the lost ground. Tagliani, a second-year driver who has yet to win his first CART race, said, "It just started doing some noise and I tried going into the corner with some different gears, but then it just blew up. It's sad because I wanted to win my first race in Canada." Andretti was followed across the finish line by Tony Kanaan, Oriol Servia, Michel Jourdain Jr., Tora Takagi and Brack, who also made contact with Carpentier on the last restart. Max Papis had the most serious accident of the day, slamming hard into a tire barrier after a mechanical failure. The Italian driver was sore but not injured.
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