Melee In Practice Forces Champ Car To Park Englishman For Weekend

BOLDERBURG, Belgium — Champ Car’s European tour got off to an inauspicious start with a four-car crash less than a minute into the opening practice session that left local hero Jan Heylen on the sidelines.
Heylen’s Conquest Racing car was extensively damaged when Dan Clarke triggered the four-car melee with some over-aggressive driving. Clarke was suspended for the rest of the Zolder weekend by Champ Car race director Tony Cotman and replaced at Minardi Team USA by veteran Mario Dominguez.
Paul Tracy had an eyewitness view of the initial incident and said he couldn’t slow down fast enough to avoid hitting Justin Wilson, who was driving the first car swept in by “Speedy Dan.”
“We’re supposed to be putting on a good advertisement for Champ Car here in Europe, and Clarke made us look like idiots,” Tracy remarked. “I don’t know what he was thinking on the first lap of practice on a new track because he was going 30 or 40 miles per hour faster than everyone else. It was like a train wreck, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Cotman said the accident was “totally unacceptable and completely avoidable,” and he didn’t rule out additional penalties for Clarke, a 23-year-old native of North Yorkshire, England.
Clarke was already on probation after causing two wrecks during the recent Grand Prix of San Jose, including one that ruined fastest qualifier Justin Wilson’s race. Clarke then matched his best finish in Champ Car with a second-place showing two weeks ago at Road America, but in the process, he pushed his teammate Robert Doornbos off track, seriously harming Doornbos’s championship hopes.
“I’m sorry that today’s incident happened, but I fully accept Tony Cotman’s decision,” Clarke stated. “I genuinely hope the other drivers involved go on to have a positive weekend here in Zolder.”
A sedate Clarke accepted Cotman’s invitation to watch the event from race control.
Meanwhile, Heylen’s weekend never really improved. His Conquest Racing mechanics worked well into the night to have the Grafiprint Panoz ready for Saturday. Heylen was 11th in practice, qualified 11th and finished 13th, the last car on the lead lap after being hobbled by a broken seventh gear. His high point was running second through pit-stop strategy late in the race.

• Graham Rahal turned in the drive of the race, overcoming a poor qualifying that left him 13th on the grid to claim the last spot on the podium.
“We got a break when Alex Figge spun off and they threw a full-course caution, so we were able to pit out of sequence,” Rahal said. “Ultimately we needed to do something different than what everyone else was doing. If we just followed them, we were never going to make up any time.”
The 18 year old from Albany, Ohio, led laps 41-47 but wasn’t able to find a way past Bruno Junqueira to compete a Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing 1-2.
“I really wanted to get by Bruno because I wanted to finish second this weekend, but he was just a touch too quick,” Rahal admitted. “At turn five, I was at least a couple tenths faster than him. I’d get right up on his gearbox going into seven every time, but you just cannot pass there. It’s too tight. I finally got next to him one time, but he made his car a little wider than it normally is, and it just wasn’t going to happen.”

• Rahal’s father, three-time Champ Car champion Bobby Rahal, accompanied his son on the first leg of Champ Car’s European tour. 
The elder Rahal will spend next weekend with his IndyCar Series and American Le Mans Series teams when they race together at Detroit’s Belle Isle.
Bobby Rahal also enjoyed spending time at Zolder with his former driver Kenny Brack. The Swedish former IndyCar champion and Champ Car race winner now lives in Brussels, Belgium.

• Bart Rietbergen, the promoter of both European Champ Car races, was extremely pleased with the attendance at Zolder. He said a weekend attendance of 45,000 was the break-even point, before adding that the race at the Assen TT Circuit in the Netherlands is expected to be his money maker.
“I really believe this form of racing can catch on strongly in Europe and we rarely see this type of attendance like this before race day,” Rietbergen said.

• Paul Tracy was happier with his Panoz than recently, thanks to engineering changes at Forsythe Championship Racing. Tom Brown was dropped by PKV Racing and quickly hired by Forsythe, which is based less than a mile from PKV in Indianapolis.
Tracy’s car suffered traction problems in the race and he finished 10th, while Oriol Servia was sixth. “The yellows were just crazy today and nobody understands how Bruno made it to the end but I’m happy for him,” said Servia.