CART POST-RACE PRESS CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT

Sunday, October 27, 2002

MERRILL CAIN: Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll get started with our top-three press conference today following a very wet and wild Honda Indy 300.

We'll start out with Paul Tracy who finished third in the #26 KOOL Honda/Lola/Bridgestone, his fourth podium finish of his season and his first podium in Australia since his win here in 1995. The finish also moves him up to eighth in the season points standing.

Paul, what can you say about this race? It was a very tough race on you guys, very tough for everyone to understand exactly how the finish wound up, and actually a very devastating first lap accident. Tell us about the race from your perspective.

PAUL TRACY: Well, it's tough. What can you say about nature? Out of everybody's control we came here to race. We're thousands of miles away from home, and we want to put on a show.

I had a pretty good car. It wasn't anything special. We're just trying to get around to the first pit stop. We made the first pit stop. I got out in front of Tony [Kanaan]. I thought we were in pretty good shape, then it started raining. It just got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. I didn't really understand what was going on. My team didn't understand what was going on. We had a feeling that CART was going to try to get the half distance. We knew we had to do two pit stops. We were the only one who came in at a certain point to finish off our two pit stops. Mario [Dominguez] and Pat [Carpentier] had already done theirs.

I guess really it was thinking ahead and forecasting what CART was going to do. It was tough for me because I didn't expect the race to go as long as it did. It was dark. I had a dark visor. I didn't change my visor. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't see where I was going. Water was on the inside of my visor, the outside of my visor. I had a dark shield. I couldn't see a thing. I'm glad it was over.

MERRILL CAIN: You talk about the tough conditions. Do you rank this as the toughest conditions to race in?

PAUL TRACY: The situation now, the track was flooding, you couldn't race in those conditions. I was having a hard time going around behind the pace car. Really the only thing I could say is Mother Nature is out of everybody's control.

I want to congratulate Herdez on their first win. A lot of racers go through periods of bad luck, good positions fall out of your hand because of luck, and today they had good luck on their side. They deserve this opportunity.

MERRILL CAIN: You've been in a race for several hours. We'll try to take a few questions.

Q: Paul, that horrendous first-lap accident. Everyone was driving blind.

PAUL TRACY: I didn't see it because I was in front of it. It's a situation where the track was wet, very wet. Once the spray gets thrown up off the tires, you just can't see at all. If you've ever been in a plane where you're flying in fog, that's all you see, is nothing, just a white blanket in front of you. Guys are going 150 miles an hour, a car is just stopped in the middle of the track. We're very lucky nobody was hurt.

Q: It's not the drivers' fault, but it was a pointless exercise. If you can't race, what's the point in just tooling around?

PAUL TRACY: Once you start the race, you have to get a half distance, so the race is not officially over. That's how the rule book reads. We can't race tomorrow because we have a race in California next week. We had to get to the half distance point. I think CART did what they had to do to get to the half distance point.

Q: You guys race, deciding how to drive appropriately in the condition, was that not an option?

PAUL TRACY: Absolutely no option at all to drive in those conditions. Not possible.

MERRILL CAIN: Congratulations to Mario Dominguez, driver of the #55 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone. Thanks for joining us.

Mario wins his first CART race and becomes the first rookie to win a CART event since last year's event with Bruno Junqueira at Road America, the first win one for Herdez Competition, dating back to the team's days as Bettenhausen Motorsports. It also moves Mario into the lead for the Jim Trueman Rookie-of-the-Year award.

You had some tough luck this season. This has to feel awfully good. A lot of things went your way at the end of the race. You have your first win in CART regardless. Talk about your effort this afternoon.

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: Like you say, what goes around comes around. We had the worst luck you can imagine this year. All that bad luck just turned around and came together in this race. It was just a matter of wonderful strategy with the team. I'm very pleased and happy with the whole thing. After the first lap, we feel very fortunate. They brought the car around, put it together back again, which I think was an unbelievable effort. Just the most amazing pit strategy. And here we are, we won.

I am the luckiest man alive at this moment. I want to dedicate it to Team Herdez, the owners, and, of course, the sponsors. I think it will be the first of many. The team is working hard. We have a lot of work to do. Today we had all the good luck. Now we have to put it together and win more races.

MERRILL CAIN: Talk about the conditions of the racetrack today. Talk about some of the things you faced out there.

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: It was very hard. At the beginning, to drive around, because I crashed the first time, and I didn't have any traction control. It made it three times harder than everybody else to drive around the racetrack without any traction control. Even in yellow flag conditions, the car was moving around a lot. At the very end, you couldn't see anything at all. It was hard.

I remember they told me to stay away from the pace car, as well. I can't stay away because I can't see where I'm going. I have to follow him to see where I'm going.

Unfortunately, the people in Australia didn't get to see the best show we can put together with Champ Cars, but we'll be back next year and make up for this one. I want to thank everybody that came to the track, even in this pouring rain, who stayed until the very end. I want to thank the Australian people. We had a wonderful welcome here in Surfers Paradise. It was great to come here for the first time and I hope to be back here many years.

MERRILL CAIN: Certainly want to recognize the fan support.

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: The best fans I've seen in the world. All the races we've been to, the Australian fans are the most supportive, most excited, the best people.

MERRILL CAIN: Questions for Mario?

Q: How difficult was it to get back into the car after the accident because you had no place to go? I heard [Team Owner] Keith [Wiggins] didn't want to tell you about your possibility of winning. When did you realize you might be a winner?

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: I kept thinking I could win here if such and such strategy happened. To tell you the truth, we had so much bad luck, if there's one guy that's not going to win this race, it's me (laughter).

Like I said, the bad luck turned around, became good luck, and we won. It's unbelievable. It's really unbelievable.

I was very frustrated after that first lap, on the front straightaway. I could not believe it. First of all, I was worried about the other drivers, but they were OK. I could not believe that my luck, that I was not going to be able to keep on racing. All of a sudden, when I got out of the car, I saw the car wasn't too badly damaged. The team went on a mission to repair it. I've got to give it to them. They fixed that car. They left it perfect. The steering wheel might have been a little bit crooked (laughter). They asked, "How is the car?" I said it's perfect, great.

Q: You said it was great strategy by your team.

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: At the beginning, we were at the back. What you want is to push your window further and further, to be able to have the most amount of laps. They did a very good job actually. I'm glad I didn't say anything on the radio because they would be slapping me now.

Q: Is it frustrating to win this way?

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: It's not frustrating actually. A win is a win; you take it any way it comes. We had so much bad luck. We had opportunity for podiums this year. Stuff happened that has taken it away from us.

It's not the best way you want to win. But a win is a win, and you take it no matter what. I was talking to Paul Tracy. You know how many times I had my car break down when I'm in the lead, this and that. So congratulations, just take it. Of course, the team deserves it. The team won it by their effort to rebuild this car after the first lap.

Q: Can you tell us how you saw the accident at the start? You were in the midst of that.

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: I couldn't see anything at all. We started accelerating from the hairpin. I couldn't see anything. I was barely on the throttle. All of a sudden I just saw from like here to where you're sitting a group of cars across the track. I didn't have time to get on the brake. Even though I was going slow, it was a pretty hard hit.

MERRILL CAIN: After 17 rounds in the series, the top five in the point standings are: Cristiano da Matta 218, Bruno Junqueira 144, Dario Franchitti 135, Patrick Carpentier 131, Christian Fittipaldi with 116 on the season.

Q: Was there a point when you found out you were going to win the race, before the finish?

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: Actually, the one lap before the race, I figured, "I think I'm going to win this one." I wasn't still sure. Like I said, I still couldn't believe it. I asked the guys. I want to cross the finish line, get the checkered flag, because you know never know what can go wrong. I asked, "Does this mean we win the race?" They were ecstatic on the radio saying, "Yes, we won."

Q: How are you going to celebrate tonight?

MARIO DOMINGUEZ: We're going to celebrate the Australian way, mate.

MERRILL CAIN: Thank you.

We will bring up Patrick Carpentier. Pat had a very good afternoon, finishing second. Driver of the #32 Player's/Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Reynard/Bridgestone, he finished second today for his fourth podium of the season. It gives Patrick 131 points on the year and moves him to within four points of third place in the standings.

Pat, we got the other drivers to talk about the conditions of the race today. Start off talking about that and obviously a great run for you to come in second place.

PATRICK CARPENTIER: Yeah, a little bit lucky. But just one question I wanted to answer. They said Mario Dominguez did not really deserve the first place. This weekend Michael [Andretti] was starting beside him at the back, and I was starting beside these guys, too. I don't think anybody deserved that place besides the guys that were at the front.

We had some weekends where I qualified up at the front, and like Fontana last year we were leading, we ended up at the back. Every weekend is different. You get conditions like this that were extremely difficult. We couldn't see absolutely anything at the start of the first time. Accelerating, I couldn't tell if I was going toward the pit lane entrance or the track. I could see absolutely nothing. I decided to move to the right to see where I was going. I was lucky. I avoided the crash. All these guys piled up together.

After that they changed the procedure of the start which I think was fantastic because it was a lot safer. We did the start. After that, they decided to stop the race because we couldn't see a thing. For me it was difficult because I could only see the light at the back of the cars, only when you were getting really close to them. It was too tough conditions and a lot of crashes would have happened. I think, like they say, there was no right decisions. But I think the decision was right to have us run behind the pace car. There was no other way we could have done it. We were hoping it would stop raining and maybe start again, but it was too dangerous.

MERRILL CAIN: The competition department had to make a lot of tough calls. From your perspective, do you feel everything was done that made the race as safe as possible?

PATRICK CARPENTIER: I think in a race like that, whatever you're going to decide, if you would have stopped the race five laps earlier, I would have been pissed off. You stopped it five laps later, so I'm pretty happy, but someone else is pissed off. That's the way it is. Some races are lost because of that. Today we got second place, which I don't think we deserve, but we got it. I think it's part of racing.

The main thing, the crash, that was one of the biggest crashes I've seen at the start. I was not too interested in seeing a second one on another restart. I think it was the right decision.

Q: If this had been Formula One, the drivers probably would have boycotted the race. Was there any talk like that after the crash?

PATRICK CARPENTIER: No. We knew when we went and talked inside the tents, we had to race. The people come to watch the race. It seemed like it was going to stop raining. Everybody was pretty happy. Went on for 10, 11 laps. We shortened the race, we decided to shorten it to 50 laps, and the pit strategy kind of stayed the same because it was a 20-lap window. We just said, "OK, let's go and try to run as fast as we can," like every race. We have to race. Like you said, tomorrow we cannot do it. If it would have been an oval, everybody would have stopped, you wait till the next day and do it, like we did in Fontana in past years.

We knew we had to race. We had to do it. It's a shame we had to do it behind the pace car, because the pace car won today. That's the way it is. That's the way racing is.

One thing that's good is everybody is going to go home, which might not have happened if we would have kept racing.

Q: If memory serves me, I think you drove for the Herdez team when it was Bettenhausen. I was wondering what those guys are going through. What do you think it means to them and how you felt when you finished second?

PATRICK CARPENTIER: The first win is always--we had ours last year, and it's always the toughest one to get. For them, when I was racing for them, we finished second at St. Louis. Paul Tracy just passed us at the end of the race. When Helio Castroneves was racing for them also.

It's not the same as when you lead a race and go on and win. It's not the same satisfaction. At that level of racing, you take it however it comes. It came for them today. Sometimes to get your first win, you need a bit of luck. Maybe that's going to motivate the team and help them a little bit more in the future. Now they've tasted it, so maybe now they'll want it even more.

MERRILL CAIN: Thanks, Pat, we appreciate it.

PATRICK CARPENTIER: Thank you.

ERRILL CAIN: I'd like to bring up the members of the competition staff to answer a few questions about today's race. We're joined by Adam Saal, CART Vice President of Communications, CART Steward Chris Kneifel joins us, and Vice President of Racing Operations John Lopes joins us. John, obviously a tough race, a lot of conditions that were thrown at us by Mother Nature today. If you could, a lot of the media here covering the series, talk about the process for shortening the race, what went into the decision, and to make it an official race, halfway point of the race, and why it was scheduled for 35 laps instead of when we originally decided to shorten the race.

JOHN LOPES: I'd like first to mention for those of you who haven't been around CART this year, typically when we have a great day of weather, they call it Pook weather. Chris announced the official end to the drought in Queensland. We might want to refer to that as Pook weather.

I want to congratulation the members of the racing operations staff today. They had a difficult task at race control, faced with some very difficult questions throughout the race. Secondly, I think the fans got an unfortunately up-close view of our safety team in action at the beginning of the race. They are the best in the business, did an amazing job with something we always fear, and that's a dual extrication where you actually have to take two drivers out of a car.

To answer your question, typically race distances are calculated based upon a TV window. For this particular race, the halfway mark was 36 laps. A race is official when it is run halfway, or 36 laps, per the rule book. So the race became official at 36 laps.

MERRILL CAIN: Because the original distance was set for 70?

JOHN LOPES: Yes. Basically that's a short synopsis. The way we calculate 70 laps at the beginning is based on a two-hour, 10-minute window for television.

MERRILL CAIN: Despite the fact that after the accident we shortened the race by 20 laps, you went back to the original distance to determine half the race?

JOHN LOPES: The way the rule book reads is that the official distance for the race, it's an official race, halfway of the covered scheduled distance, which was 70. So officially the race halfway mark was 36 no matter how we shortened the race throughout.

MERRILL CAIN: Chris Kneifel, if you could speak to the issue, the conditions that the drivers faced during the course of this race was obviously very difficult. Talk about the measures that race control took to try and make it as competitive a race as we could, and make it safe for the competitors.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Obviously, Mother Nature got the better side of us today, no question about that.

Not having really done this with this type of weather here in Australia before, we thought the track conditions permitted to go ahead and get the race started. We chose initially going for a single-file start. We asked the drivers to give some spacing. Obviously, that didn't happen on the first start. Turned into a bad situation on the front straightaway in the obvious red flag situation. During the cleanup, the rains came again shortly after we got restarted. We just got upside down and were never able to get back on top of it.

We were hoping to have better things happen today; it just didn't work out.

MERRILL CAIN: Adam Saal, if you could speak to the situation. A tough situation, tough decisions. You've been through a lot of these races. You know how tough the decision to make is.

ADAM SAAL: That is actually why I'm joining, because we did have a great weekend here. It seemed we were in a completely different situation today. That's Australia. One day it seems fine, next day literally the skies open up.

It was a great event. Many milestones this weekend. Incredible attendance. We also made it clear we're going to be back here through 2008 with a great continuation of a great event. This is definitely a memorable one.

But frankly we've been through some dark and rainy races here before. We always managed come back and have a great time. I'd like to thank IMG, Jeff Jones, John Cawley and everybody on the crew who made it a great effort for us, it was an outstanding event. Again, not the result we wanted weather wise but we made it work.

I want to thank these guys for coming here directly. I explained to them that it's late in the day, they came in to speak with all of you. We do appreciate that.

MERRILL CAIN: Because of the late hour, we want to take some questions from the media quickly.

Q: Chris Kneifel, given the conditions at the start, does that present a case for rolling starts to come under review in those conditions?

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Rolling starts versus standing starts? That's an ongoing debate. We had a CART fan forum in Columbus, Ohio, a few months back. A lot of our fans love the standing starts. I guess it's an ongoing question. It's something we consider all the time. Right now, this is how we start our races.

I have to tell you, you can have some pretty awful stack-ups with standing starts, as well. The incident today , it's something that happened. You can have a bad deal like that with a standing start. We had some contact that led to track blockage and guys ran into each other.

Q: If the race could have been called at 36 laps, why wasn't it? I think Michael Andretti might have won at 36 laps. Perhaps because he's going to IRL, that wasn't a desirable outcome?

JOHN LOPES: Absolutely not. In fact, I observed the stewards making their decision, and it was a very tough decision. Chris, you might want to elaborate on this. We were in a situation where there were several drivers cycled to have pit stops on Laps 36 and 37. As such, the stewards didn't want to play God and choose who was going to win the race. What they did is they stepped aside and they convened and decided what was the best way to conduct the finish of the race. That was to have the race go as long as possible with respect to dwindling daylight, and pit cycles, everyone through their pit stops at least two times.

So what happened was, in effect, everyone cycled through twice, and they let the race go for as long as possible, and they called it at Lap 40.

MERRILL CAIN: Chris, do you want to elaborate?

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Keeping the maximum number for the pit stop window 20 laps, that kind of became the magic number. Forty, 41 was the magic number. Obviously, as we crept closer to 40, the weather persisted in a downward trend. Light was obviously difficult. Our pace car was also running out of gas.

Q: You were playing God. You have this half distance rule in atrocious conditions where it seemed you should finish the race as soon as possible, you let it go on another four laps, turned the results upside down. With all due respect to Mario, the guy is dead last, spends half the race in the pits, it doesn't seem to me that you're being very consistent about playing God because you really shouldn't have extended four laps in these conditions on the safety issue thing.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: I would venture to guess no matter what lap we picked, there was going to be people that were happy and people that were not happy, and possibly even more than unhappy. I think that goes without saying. It's not our job to worry about who we please and who we don't please, nor is it our job to look and see who might win, who might not win, based on the different strategies that play out.

It's our job to make every attempt to make decisions that are based on integrity and thoughtfulness. We really believe that getting to a point where everyone will have had to make an equal number of pit stops was a fair decision. Obviously, in the Michael Andretti situation, they pitted I believe Lap 16, which would have took him to 36, which would have been the number that it became an official race.

If you wanted to really look carefully into that, there would be a very interesting rule book interpretation based on that because technically he was due in the pits at Lap 36. I would venture to guess, although I certainly would not be so presumptuous to speak for everyone, but I would venture to guess the cars immediately behind Michael at that time, which were the two of the cars, I believe there was a third one, but for sure the Team Rahal car, Vasser and Jourdain, I'm not sure which order, but Team Rahal pitted on Lap 17. It's entirely possible they had a different interpretation of that rule.

All I'm saying is, we were in a situation. No matter where we came down on this one, it wasn't pretty. We're very aware of that. Days like this don't make us happy because there's nothing that I personally care more about than our drivers and our teams in this racing series. When it goes the wrong way on us, we're very aware of that. It's just our job to make the best decisions we can and to be fair and have integrity and move along.

I can assure you that any insinuation that I and my fellow stewards made a decision that was based on doing something wrong to Michael Andretti because of his decision to go race in another series, that's just wrong, that's wrong. I've known Michael for many, many years. I don't do things like that.

Q: Do you have the name of the pace car driver?

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Gail Truess.

Q: Chris, when it looks as bad as it did, there wasn't any racing going on, why not red flag it and come back tomorrow? You have a big crowd here, the consideration of the people. Can you think about a red flag at all?

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Nothing would have made me happier than to red flag it and come back tomorrow.

JOHN LOPES: We actually talked to the promoter early on in the race to see if we could race tomorrow. He said, 'No.' It has to do with business interruption and street closure issues. On an oval, typically we would red flag the race and come back and race the next day. That wasn't an option. We also wanted to give the fans, who paid their money, traveled so far to be here, a chance to see the cars on track. We also wanted to have a checkered flag. If not, if we would have red flagged the race, we would have had one of the races in the championship go without points awarded.

We decided to move forward in a very, very difficult situation. It was really our only option.

Q: There appeared to be an animated conversation behind the garage. Could you tell me the substance? Slight delay from the 3:15 reschedule.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Would you be referring when we got the drivers together?

Q: Yes.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Actually, I wouldn't categorize that as animated at all. I just thought there were a lot of questions, and the best thing to do was to get all the drivers together, make sure that we're all on the same page as to what we were going to do procedurally to carry on with the race, make sure we had a good understanding of when we were looking for in terms of going ahead and getting the race restarted.

The input of these guys is invaluable. It's their butts that are on the line out there. It's important that they were all on the same page in knowing and understanding what we were looking to do. Truth be known, the guys came up with some excellent ideas and some very valuable input as to how we chose to go ahead and get the race restarted.

Having that dialogue with the guys, it's very important. It's one of those things that they pulled together when they need to.

ADAM SAAL: If I could add a little bit to that. Dario Franchitti took it upon himself to come up to the tower and offer some very positive and constructive and very cordial recommendations.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: This was a new one in my book, both as an official and driver.

MERRILL CAIN: Thank you very much. We appreciate the job that you guys do. Thanks for joining us this afternoon.