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Brazilian Racing News: DeFerran Confident for 1999

23 March 1999

Brazilian driver Gil de Ferran is very confident for the 1999 CART/FedEx
Championship. The brazilian driver will be one of the 5 drivers to race
with Goodyear and his car will be a Honda-Reynard.

"I really think Goodyear will have better tyres, as all their enginners
will be working for the CART tyres, including the enginners that left
F-1" said de Ferran, that will for the first time in his CART career
have a team mate.

"Obviously, we had a very wearing season last year (12th in points), so
I basically did very little in terms of driving in November and
December. I had a lot of time to unwind. I had a very good off-season in
many ways. The effect that's had on me has been remarkable. I have a new
pool of energy and am very excited to start racing." said Gil.

"The testing has been going very well. There have been some changes in
the team (additional crew to support new teammate Naoki Hattori) and
that has been for the better. I start in a very positive frame-of-mind."

Walker Racing is one of the only team to still believe that Goodyear
will have good tyres in 1999. The last team to leave the US tyres
factory was Newman Haas, that will now race on Firestone tyres.

Marc Zimmermann -- The Auto Channel