#10 Kanaan CART Rockingham Saturday Race

Mechanical Problem Cuts Short Kanaan's Rockingham Bid

CORBY, England (Saturday, Sept. 14, 2002) -- Tony Kanaan and the #10 Pioneer-WorldCom/Mo Nunn Racing Honda-Lola retired due to a mechanical problem-induced collision on Lap 168 of a scheduled 211 laps during today's Rockingham 500 CART FedEx Championship Series event.  Kanaan started eighth, lost a spot to Alex Tagliani at the start, and ran ninth until the second round of pit stops despite fighting handling problems.  He pitted for the second of four scheduled fuel-and-tire stops on Lap 94 and fell back to 14th.  He worked his way back up to 11th by the next round of pit stops that began on Lap 137.  He again fell back, this time to 15th, but was back in 11th when trouble struck on Lap 168.  He reported a front-end problem entering Turn 1 of this unique four-cornered, D-shaped oval and managed to get the car all the way to Turn 2 when something let go and sent the car into the outside wall at Turn 2.  It was a relatively light impact and Kanaan was unhurt.

Scot Dario Franchitti brought home the victory today in front of a partisan UK crowd.  Cristiano da Matta finished second while Patrick Carpentier picked up the final podium position.


The CART FedEx Championship Series takes the next two weekends off before resuming the weekend of Oct. 4-6 with the inaugural Grand Prix Americas on the streets of downtown Miami.

TONY KANAAN QUOTES

"I don't know exactly what happened.  Something let go as I entered Turn 1, but I was able to make the corner.  I hung on as long as I could as I tried to get all the way back around to see what the problem was.  But by the time I got to Turn 2, the car didn't turn and I went straight into the wall.  It wasn't a bad impact.  The car's okay and we'll bring it back for the next race.  But it's a shame.  We struggled with some problems this morning in warm-up.  We had some problems in practice and qualifying yesterday, too.  So it wasn't a very pretty weekend.  But we're here to talk about it and we need to pack up and take this show to my hometown of Miami for the next one."