Da Matta wins provisional pole

August 23, 2002

MONTREAL -- The AP reported that Cristiano da Matta guaranteed himself another front-row start by winning the provisional pole Friday for the inaugural Montreal Molson-Indy.

The Brazilian earned another standings point and leads Patrick Carpentier and Bruno Junqueira by 43 points. He can add one more in final qualifying Saturday.

"When the car is working good, it's a lot less complicated from the inside," said da Matta, who has six poles and six victories in 12 races this season. "For a new track, there's not a whole lot of things we had to do to get (the car) decent. The team did a lot of guessing and did it right."

His Newman-Haas Lola-Toyota got around around the 2.709-mile, 14-turn Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Notre Dame Island in 1 minute, 19.465 seconds, which translates to 122.279 mph.

This is the same track on which the Formula One series has raced since 1978, making it the first time both F1 and CART have competed on the same track in the same year.

Many people have been waiting to see how the Champ cars would compare to the smaller, more nimble F1 cars here.

On the first day of F1 practice in June, Rubens Barrichello's Ferrari led the way at 1:16.930. The next day, Juan Montoya, a former CART champion driving a Williams, set the F1 track qualifying record of 1:12.836.

"I think this shows our engineers and the engine manufacturers are pretty smart," da Matta said.

Scott Dixon was second Friday at 122.279 mph, followed by Kenny Brack at 122.099 mph.

"This track is a little tight for our cars, especially in some of the slow corners," Brack said. "The F1 cars are smaller and get through a little better. Our cars are like a bus here, in comparison."

Tora Takagi was fourth, and Christian Fittipaldi, da Matta's teammate, was fifth. Junqueira was eighth.

The opening-day crowd estimated at more than 40,000 was disappointed by the three Canadians in the 18-car field. Carpentier had the best run at 121.142, but wound up ninth after a spin late in the session.

Like last weekend at Road America, his day was hampered by problems with his electronics.

Countrymen Paul Tracy and Alex Tagliani had even worse days.

Tracy was 16th, and Tagliani was last after bringing out the only red flag of qualifying when he locked his brakes and slammed into a tire wall.

"We made some changes on the car between sessions and when I went out this afternoon I went over a bump and hit the wall," Tagliani said. "Because I brought the red, I lost my quickest time and we didn't get to go out again. I hope it's a nice day tomorrow because if it's not, we're in trouble."

CART used its new qualifying procedure for the first time. Instead of 60 minutes of time trials, the session began with a short practice, and drivers then had 35 minutes of qualifying.

The change was made to give the fans more action, because most teams were waiting until the last 30 minutes to send cars onto the track, hoping to get better conditions.

"It's good for the fans, but we're still going to wait to the last minute to take advantage of the good track," said Brack, whose quick lap came in the final minutes of the session.