CART: Gugelmin and PacWest patient at Laguna

Posted By Terry Callahan
Motorsports Editor, The Auto Channel

(Monterey, CA--PacWest Racing’s Mauricio Gugelmin tested Wednesday on the 2.238 mile road course of Laguna Seca, just five short months after finishing seventh there during round sixteen of the 2000 FedEx Championship series.

Frustration was the theme of this session for PacWest and the other teams as twelve different cars attempted to test during the day. With a limited number of medical and track officials on hand, only four cars were permitted to run on the track at the same time. This limitation forced PacWest to alter their regular testing program.

Gugelmin ran approximately 140 miles overall, with his quickest time being clocked at 69.7 seconds. Cristiano da Matta’s time of 68.6 seconds was the day’s quickest.

Scott Dixon will test at Laguna for PacWest on Thursday, before the team heads to Texas for some oval running on February 21 and 22.

MAURICIO GUGELMIN - # 17 NEXTEL PACWEST TOYOTA

“I only managed to run approximately 60 laps, which is not what we were hoping for,” said Gugelmin. “We were able to work on some things that we have been trying to sort out for the last few sessions we’ve run, and I think we’ve finally turned the corner. My crew and I have done a lot of front suspension comparison testing, which has been an important part of our program. I really wanted to run on new tires at the end of the day, because I think I would have been able to improve on my time enough to make it comparable with the quickest runners. We would have been right there with lap times, but we just didn’t get the chance. I was able to get a base line set-up for Scott, who runs Thursday, so hopefully he can take that and generate some useful information that will carry over to our next session.”

ALLEN McDONALD – PACWEST TECHNICAL DIRECTOR

“It was a pretty frustrating day for PacWest, as I’m sure it was for all of the teams that came out here today to test,” said McDonald. “We did manage to work on a couple of things from our normal program, and we learned a lot from some comparison testing we did with our suspension components. At the end of the day, we were hoping to go out on new tires to see what kind of speed we could manage, but several consecutive red flags prohibited us from doing so. Mo, like many of the other drivers here today, had one small off during the day, but it was very minor and did not limit our running time at all. Hopefully we can get in a few more miles on Thursday with Scott.”

Text Provided By Tom Hollett

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