#21 Giaffone IRL Gateway Pre-Race Notes/Quotes

Felipe Giaffone #21 Hollywood/Mo Nunn Racing Chevrolet G-Force Gateway Indy 250 -August 24-25, 2002 - Pre-Race Notes/Quotes Gateway International Raceway - Madison, Ill. - 1.25-Mile Oval Round 13 of 15 on the 2002 Indy Racing League **Felipe Giaffone is making his 26th career Indy Racing League start and his 13th with Hollywood/Mo Nunn Racing at Sunday's Gateway Indy 250 at Gateway International Raceway. **At the Belterra Casino Indy 300 at Kentucky Speedway two weekends ago, the 27-year-old Brazilian open-wheel driving veteran and 2001 IRL Rookie of the Year scored the first IRL victory of his career and the first win in the 2-1/2 year history Mo Nunn Racing, which came to life with the 2000 CART FedEx Championship Series and added Giaffone and the Hollywood Chevrolet G-Force effort to its stable this season. Giaffone started a season-high third on the grid at Kentucky and led a race-high 124 of 200 laps over the 1.5-mile tri-oval. He held off defending series champion Sam Hornish, Jr., to win by 0.932 of a second. **The win moved Giaffone to within 17 points of Hornish atop the driver points standings with three events remaining in 2002. Giaffone is in fourth place with 382 points while Hornish leads with 399. Indy 500 winner Helio Castroneves is second with 395 points, followed by third-place Gil de Ferran with 386. **Giaffone is among the leaders in a number of other season statistical categories. His $1.183 million in earnings is second only to Castroneves' $2.285 million. Giaffone's eight top-five finishes is surpassed only by Castroneves' and de Ferran's nine top-fives. And his 11 top-10 finishes is tied for best in the series with Castroneves. Giaffone has led 165 laps this season, fifth best on a list that is led by de Ferran's 520. And his 2,385 laps completed on the year is second only to de Ferran's 2,433. **Before scoring his first victory at Kentucky, Giaffone was knocking on the door all season long. At the Michigan Indy 400 on July 28, Giaffone started 12th but got off to a great start and found himself in sixth after the first tour around the 2-mile high-banked tri-oval and ran with the leaders the rest of the way. Giaffone was fourth by Lap 7, and took the lead for the first time by Lap 70. He led five times for a total of 24 laps, including Laps 190-193 of the 200-lap, 400-mile event. Tomas Scheckter passed him on Lap 194 and pulled away for an easy victory. Scheckter's teammate Buddy Rice, making his first-ever IRL start, passed Giaffone for second place on the very last lap. It was Giaffone's third third-place finish of the season, the others coming at the Indy 500 in May and Richmond on June 29. **Since his one and only DNF of the season due to an early-race accident at Phoenix back in March, Giaffone has reeled off 10 consecutive top-seven finishes. **Prior to that DNF at Phoenix, Giaffone opened the season with a seventh-place performance in his Mo Nunn Racing debut at Homestead, Fla. **Giaffone won 2001 Indy Racing League Rookie of the Year with 10 top-10 finishes and three top-fives with Treadway/Hubbard Racing last season, including a season-best finish of second at Texas Motor Speedway in June. He started sixth but did not finish due to handling problems here at Gateway International Raceway last August. **At the 86th Indy 500 on May 26, Giaffone made a bid for his first career IRL victory. He started fourth, led for 11 laps in all, and was running second when he made a late-race bid to overtake then-leader and eventual race-winner Castroneves, only to be held up by lapped traffic and dropped back to third. **For the first and only time this season, Giaffone ran with a teammate at Indy. CART series regular Tony Kanaan drove a second team car, the #17 Hollywood/Mo Nunn Racing Chevrolet G-Force, and appeared headed to a victory himself. Kanaan started fifth (the fastest rookie qualifier in the 33-car field), alongside Giaffone on the second row, and led 23 laps before crashing while leading after spinning in the oil of fellow CART regular Bruno Junqueira. **During his Indy Lights career, prior to joining the IRL in 2001, Giaffone enjoyed a four-season run in the Indy Lights championship, a run that included a 2000 victory from the pole here at Michigan. He was fourth in Indy Lights driver points in 1998 and 2000, and sixth in 1999 driving for Conquest racing. **This is Mo Nunn Racing's inaugural Indy Racing League season after spending the first two years of its existence exclusively in CART with Kanaan (2000-2001) and Alex Zanardi (2001). In addition to Giaffone and the Hollywood car in the IRL, Mo Nunn Racing in 2002 is also campaigning Kanaan' s #10 Pioneer-WorldCom/Mo Nunn Racing Honda-Lola in the CART series, Kanaan' s fifth Champ Car season and third with Mo Nunn Racing. Kanaan and the CART FedEx Championship Series are racing at Montreal this weekend. Kanaan was fourth at Road America last weekend, his second top-four finish in the last three events. **Giaffone's driving coach in 1999 was Brazilian three-time Formula 1 champion Nelson Piquet. **Giaffone began racing go-karts in Brazil at age 12. His father, Jose, was a longtime Brazilian stock car racer. Giaffone's brother, Jose, and cousin Affonso, also raced in Indy Lights. **New for Giaffone this season: the 2002 season is his first as a married man. He married his longtime girlfriend "Alice" on Jan. 15 in Brazil. As the story goes, Giaffone won the favor of his new bride back in 1994 singing karaoke. **Engineering Giaffone's #21 Hollywood Chevrolet this season is Eric Cowdin, who moved to Mo Nunn Racing's IRL program after engineering Kanaan in the CART series during the team's first two seasons. Cowdin, in fact, engineered Kanaan's entries dating back to the 1996 and 1997 Dayton Indy Lights Rookie of the Year and series championship seasons, respectively, at Tasman Motorsports, as well as Kanaan's inaugural Champ Car season with Tasman (later Forsythe Championship Racing) in 1999. Kanaan won that year's U.S. 500 and sat on the pole at Long Beach. **Peter Parrott, longtime Penske Motorsports and International Speedway Corp., executive, joined Mo Nunn Racing this past offseason to take on the role of team manager of the IRL program. Parrott was team manager at Vince Granatelli Racing in the early 1990s when Mo Nunn Racing team owner Morris Nunn was then engineer for Granatelli's entry for driver Arie Luyendyk. **Prior to starting his own team in 2000, Morris Nunn was technical director at Target/Chip Ganassi Racing during four consecutive CART championships won by the team for drivers Jimmy Vasser (1996), Alex Zanardi (1997-98) and Juan Montoya (1999). Nunn also engineered Emerson Fittipaldi's 1989 Indy 500 victory and CART series title. The former driver and Formula 1 team owner came to the U.S. in the early 1980s and over the years engineered such notable CART drivers as Eddie Cheever, Arie Luyendyk and Michael Andretti. Nunn's list of Formula 1 drivers includes Clay Regazzoni, Roberto Guerrero, Chris Amon, Jackie Ickx, Patrick Tambay, Nelson Piquet, Johnny Cecotto, and Derek Daly. FELIPE GIAFFONE "I definitely like the racetrack at Gateway. We're back to the smaller ovals, where we've been strong every time. We have a good car for the smaller ovals. It's going to be very close all the way up and down the grid. The Penskes will be strong and Hornish will be strong. Gateway is different from all the other smaller ovals because it's not symmetrical. Turn 1 and 2 are pretty tight, and 3 and 4 should be pretty flat when the car is good. You really have to have a good setup, but it's tricky because you are making compromises all the time. We're still feeling good about getting our first win at Kentucky, but still, nobody really overreacted. We 're pumped up, but we realize there are three races to go in the championship and we are only 17 points out of the lead. It's wide open, but the driver who finishes all three of the races stands the best chance, so that's the most important thing to do, first. And then, you want to finish as high as you can in all three. We have a good finishing record, so we just need to keep doing what we've been doing"