#10 Kanaan CART Rockingham Friday Qualifying

Kanaan Qualifies Eighth for Saturday's Rockingham 500

CORBY, England (Friday, Sept. 13, 2002) -- Tony Kanaan and the #10 Pioneer-WorldCom/Mo Nunn Racing Honda-Lola will start Saturday's Rockingham 500 CART FedEx Championship Series event from the outside of the fourth row after the opening of practice and final qualifying today on the 1.5-mile oval.  Kanaan circled the unique, four-cornered, D-shaped oval in 25.048 seconds (212.568 mph) on his first of two qualifying hot laps this afternoon.  This weekend's one and only practice session prior to qualifying - a 2-hour, 15-minute run this morning - saw Kanaan finish 10th in the order in his 10X Pioneer-WorldCom Honda-powered back-up while he experienced problems with his primary after moving it as high as fourth in the order with some 45 minutes remaining.


Defending polesitter Kenny Brack repeated the feat he accomplished at last year's inaugural event here by circling the track fastest on the day at 24.908 seconds (213.763 mph).  Michael Andretti qualified second in 24.928 seconds (213.591 mph) while series points leader Cristiano da Matta qualified third in 24.954 seconds (213.369 mph).

Race time Saturday is 1:30 p.m. local time (8:30 a.m. EDT) with a live broadcast set for SPEED Channel, beginning with a 30-minute warm-up show at 8 a.m. EDT.  Saturday's 30-minute warm-up session begins at 9:15 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. EDT).


TONY KANAAN QUOTES

"I think we're pretty satisfied with our qualifying time, all things considered.  We had a very good run at the beginning of practice this morning, but then we ran into some problems with our primary car and had to go to the back-up, which worked pretty well for a while, too, even though all our good stuff was on the primary car.  We made some changes in our setup to allow for the change in the weather this afternoon, and we did the best we could.  I knew we didn't have enough to get the pole, but I do honestly feel we have a good race car.  So I'm looking forward to having some fun tomorrow.  It's going to be a very, very competitive race.  The wing configuration we're running her compared to last year makes this track really, really fast and fun to drive.   So I think you're going to see some more action here tomorrow compared to last year.  Obviously, we'd much rather be starting up front so we can avoid some of the 'action,' if you know what I mean.  But we have a solid race setup, a good oval car, I think."