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CART: Grand Prix of Long Beach - Shigeaki Hattori

18 April 1999

Grand Prix of Long Beach - Round #3
Shigeaki Hattori - #16
EPSON Bettenhausen Motorsports                 
Mercedes-Benz/Reynard/Goodyear

April 16, 1999 - After a promising Friday morning practice session, EPSON Bettenhausen Motorsports driver Shigeaki Hattori was forced to retire early from this afternoon's qualifying session with a broken primary exhaust pipe (a.k.a. header). His best time from this morning's session was 66.282 seconds.

Shigeaki Hattori
"On the front straight, the power from the engine just dropped. I wasn't on a quick lap, it was still the warm up, so I wasn't sure what was wrong. It makes it tough for me because we lost so much track time but I could feel already that the car was much better than this morning - more grip, more comfortable. I feel confident that we'll be able to post better times tomorrow."

Tom Brown - Chief Engineer
"It's a pity to lose so much track time! It certainly wasn't perfect timing but better in the early laps of today's qualifying than in the early laps of the race on Sunday!"

Pre-Race Testing
The team has had very limited opportunities to test with the car in road course set-up. Upon their return from Motegi, the team completed one day of testing at Button Willow on Tuesday. This test was specially sanctioned by CART as the interval between Motegi and Long Beach had been designated as a "black-out" period for testing.

Tom Brown - Chief Engineer
"We did about one hundred miles on Tuesday - just getting Shigeaki used to the car. He'd never been in a Champ Car that was set up for a road course so he just needed time to learn the intricacies of it. The test went well and he was able to build up some experience that should be helpful to us this weekend."

Next Up - Saturday
Practice 9:00-10:15am
Final Qualifying 12:15-2:00pm

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