CART: Mercedes 1-2-3 in Nazareth Practice
25 April 1998
Mercedes-powered cars filled the top three spots on the time sheets following this afternoon's second practice for the Bosch Spark Plug Grand Prix. Looking more like a seasoned veteran than the rookie that he is, Helio Castro-Neves led the way and was the only driver to post an average speed above 180 mph. The Team Alumax pilot's fast lap of 18.888 seconds (180.305 mph) was only .057 seconds off of the qualifying record set here last year by Paul Tracy.Joining Castro-Neves in the top three were fellow Mercedes-Benz drivers Player's Forsythe Racing's Greg Moore, who enters this weekend ranked second in the championship standings, and Hollywood Reynard/Mercedes pilot Mauricio Gugelmin.
Greg Moore
Hogan Racing rookie JJ Lehto was 17th, while Motorola-backed driver Mark Blundell was 22nd. Marlboro Team Penske teammates Al Unser Jr. and Andre Ribeiro were 28th and 29th, respectively.
Morning practice is planned for 9 a.m. tomorrow followed by qualifying at 1:15 p.m. Sunday's 225-lap race is scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. and will be televised live on ESPN.
Mercedes Quotes
Helio Castro-Neves, No. 16, Alumax Reynard/Mercedes/Goodyear
"Tom Brown (Chief Engineer) is amazing, not only him but Tony
(Bettenhausen), too. The car feels great, very good and very fast. For
today, we did a good job. But tomorrow we'll have to check the condition
of the track and the car. It may be sunny, or it may be cloudy, so it
could change. We'll have to see. Tomorrow is the important day."
Greg Moore, No. 99, Player's Reynard/Mercedes/Firestone
"I'm really pleased so far. We've done no short oval testing
this
year. We know where we want to be, and we only had to make minor changes
(to the setup) to start getting there. Traffic is where you win these
races. The track is so small that even when there isn't a lot of traffic,
you're still affected by their air, so you have to have a car that works
in
traffic."
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"We're still chasing some push in the car, and around here that can cost you a lot of time. Turn two is almost flat, you just lift (off the throttle) only to adjust the rake of the car, so it's really how you come out of (turn) one that matters. If you get through there right, it allows you to carry speed all the way around. Then the engine is really right in the rev range you want, and it is just so sweet. I've basically forgotten about the first three races. We're back where we belong."
Patrick Carpentier, No. 33, Player's Reynard/Mercedes/Firestone
"Most of that session we ran on full (fuel) tanks. We're
trying to
improve the car (on full tanks for the race), so we'll probably do some
more of that tomorrow morning. Once the tank was (nearly) empty, the car
was more stable, and it felt really good."
JJ Lehto, No. 9 Hogan Leasing Reynard/Mercedes/Firestone
"The race balance is very good. For qualifying though we need
a
quick time. We still have to find a half a second.."
Mark Blundell, No. 18, Motorola Reynard/Mercedes/Firestone
"Frankly we didn't have a good session. A lot of problems
were
costly to us in terms of time. We can't seem to get a handle on getting
over the bumps in the race track. That costs us traction.."
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