Champ Car Drivers Still Worried About Stalling On The Grid

By John Oreovicz
NSSN Correspondent
PORTLAND, Ore. — Many Champ Car drivers predicted disaster in the series’s first standing start. But all 17 cars rolled off the grid without incident at Portland Int’l Raceway, and series officials confirmed that the new procedure will again be used at Cleveland.
Three-time series champion Sebastien Bourdais was the least optimistic of the drivers, but after winning Sunday’s race at PIR, the Frenchman admitted he might have worried too much.
“I’m just very happy that my dark visions didn’t happen and nobody stalled, which is good,” Bourdais said. “It doesn’t mean it’s never going to happen. It means I was a little more pessimistic than the truth, so it’s a good thing. It definitely put on a good show.”
Even Justin Wilson, normally the most rational and level-headed of drivers, admitted he was cautious.
“It’s definitely spectacular, the standing start, and I think it is very exciting,” Wilson said. “But at the same time, it’s not guaranteed that you won’t stall, and it doesn’t seem like there’s many things that the driver does that changes that. It’s just very random.
“When it happens, there’s very little you can do. I haven’t found anything you can do yet. It’s just pretty much one in four the car will stall, and you don’t know what you did wrong. So, that makes you nervous.”
Graham Rahal and Tristan Gommendy lost position at the start, while Team Australia’s Will Power vaulted from seventh on the grid to third into the first corner.
“At first I really thought (Power) jumped the start,” Bourdais said. “We’re definitely going to have to give a look at what he’s doing. It was pretty impressive.”

— The Grand Prix of Portland was the first Champ Car race to run without a full-course caution since the event at Road America in August 2000. Last year’s Portland race was almost problem-free. Only the first of 105 laps was run under yellow due to a waved-off start. In all, 208-consecutive laps of green-flag racing have been run at PIR over the last two years.

— Robert Doornbos continued his impressive rookie Champ Car campaign for Minardi Team USA. The Dutchman qualified on the outside of the front row before finishing third. Doornbos held second place through the first stint of the race, but dropped some 16 seconds behind leader Wilson. He later had a dice with Power before pulling away.
“I immediately felt that definitely the red tires were not working for my car, and I was struggling with oversteer,” Doornbos said. “I just saw the gap growing and growing. It was a very frustrating moment because Justin was just cruising away. Then on the black tires, the car was a lot more easy to drive. We proved today that if we want to win races or challenge Sebastien or Justin, we need to improve the car more.”

— Minardi Team USA’s Dan Clarke finished sixth, but he was the subject of scorn from a pair of his fellow drivers. “Once we caught up to ‘stupid Dan,’ which is what I’m going to call him from now on, he just drove me off the road and that was that,” complained ninth-place finisher Rahal.
“Our launch in the start was pretty good,” noted Simon Pagenaud. “Then bloody Dan Clarke made a banzai move again, as usual, and I didn’t have any choice but to shortcut the chicane or he would nail me. Basically that ruined my race.”

— Saturday’s qualifying session was held in rainy conditions that Portland Oregonian reporters said were the worst they had witnessed in the 24-year history of the Portland GP.
“There’s definitely a few puddles on this start straight,” Justin Wilson said. “A couple of times I pulled off line just to gain some visibility, and you hit some of these puddles and the car starts to move around, and you just hope that it stays in a straight line.”

— PKV Racing rookie Gommendy actually set the fastest time in the wet qualifying session, about 13 seconds slower than Wilson’s time in the dry. But Gommendy lost his best lap from the session because he spun off and caused a red flag, which dropped him to fifth on the final grid. The Frenchman struggled in race traffic and finished seventh.

— Paul Tracy’s return to the Champ Car World Series after missing two races due to injury couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start. The Canadian star crashed at turn seven on his first hot lap of Friday morning’s practice and had to revert to a spare car for the rest of the weekend.
Tracy qualified 13th and finished 10th on a track where he has historically not run well. Forsythe Championship Racing teammate Oriol Servia didn’t fare any better, taking 11th.
“We really just struggled, but we were able to get a top 10 out of it at least,” Tracy said.