LONG BEACH (April 16, 2004) - Bruno Junqueira (#6 PacifiCare Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) has spent the last two offseasons after finishing second in the Bridgestone Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford, lamenting the points that got away, as he watched someone else celebrate winning the prestigious Vanderbilt Cup.
This year the Brazilian decided to do something about it as soon as he got a chance, using the initial qualifying session of the 2004 campaign to snare the first available championship point. Junqueira paced the opening qualifying run for Sunday’s season-opening Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach with a best lap of 1:08.913 (102.808 mph) to top an 18-car field. The run guarantees Junqueira a front-row starting spot for Sunday’s race no matter what happens in Saturday’s final session, and also gives him one championship point.
“It’s pretty good to come up in the first day of competition and end the day in front,” Junqueira said. “I think my car is good. Out of the box this morning it was very, very quick. Hopefully we can keep it for tomorrow and for Sunday’s race.”
Junqueira outpaced the man he chased so fiercely for the title in 2003 as defending series and Long Beach champion Paul Tracy (#1 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) would settle for the second spot on a sunny day in Southern California. Tracy would hold the pole for 16 minutes as he came out at the halfway mark of the 40-minute session and carded his best time of 1:09.156 (102.447 mph) around the 1.968-mile street course. The time would hold up all the way until the end of the session, when Junqueira eclipsed him with just three minutes left on the clock. Tracy was still on course and made one last-ditch effort to reclaim the top spot, but came up just short.
“We went out with eight, nine minutes to go and there was just a lot of traffic,” Tracy said. “It was difficult to put a lap together without coming across somebody or somebody coming out of the pits. It just didn't seem to flow right for me. So, you know, that's the way it goes sometimes. Sometimes the track is crowded. We waited till the end and that's the risk you take.”
The third and final spot on the podium went to Alex Tagliani (#8 Johnson Controls Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who vaulted to the third position on his 10th lap of the session, making the jump with a lap of 1:09.450 (102.013 mph). Tagliani, who earned a pair of poles with his Rocketsports Racing last season, climbed over Mario Dominguez (#55 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) to reach the third spot. Dominguez also used his last set of tires to card his quickest time, adding to a flurry of fast laps at the end of the day. Dominguez and his new Herdez teammate Ryan Hunter-Reay (#4 Herdez Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) took over the fourth and fifth positions on the Friday grid, Dominguez coming in with a best effort of 1:09.458 (102.001mph) and Hunter-Reay carding an 1:09.613 (101.774 mph).
Patrick Carpentier (#7 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) came home with a sixth-place run with a time of 1:09.730 (101.603 mph), putting him one spot ahead of the day’s top rookie A.J. Allmendinger (#10 RuSPORT Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone). Allmendinger, running in his first-ever Champ Car qualifying session, turned a top lap of 1:09.905 (101.349 mph) to place seventh on the grid.
The three-car Forsythe team secured three of the first eight spots on the Friday grid after Rodolfo Lavin (#3 Corona Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) put up a best orbit of 1:09.953 (101.279 mph) as the last driver of the day to break 70 seconds. Last year’s Rookie of the Year Sebastien Bourdais (#2 McDonald’s Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) would settle for the ninth spot on a day when he felt bottled up by the amount of traffic on the course during qualifying. He finished two-tenths of a second ahead of Jimmy Vasser (#12 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who rounded out the top 10 on the first day of qualifying.
The final qualifying session to set the grid for Sunday’s season opener will take place Saturday afternoon from 1:45 - 2:45 Pacific Time and can be seen live in high-definition format at HDNet. Fans can also follow all the action with the new Race Director feature on the official website of the Champ Car World Series, www.champcarworldseries.com.
Quotes From Top Three Finishers:
ALEX TAGLIANI: So far, so good. We also made a major change in the car between practice and qualifying, because we were so confident that the car was really good this morning that we could have just improved it. I think we made it a little bit worse and we had to work really hard to get this lap in. So I think tomorrow we should go back to what we had this morning and I'm pretty sure that we'll have a fair shot to try to get the pole.
PAUL TRACY: Well, I think it shows everybody is out here, there's no joking around. It's gotten real serious real quick. We've all had a lot of time off and a lot of time to think about what we need to do this year. A lot of the guys like even just to give you an example, Mario Haberfeld had not driven a car until two days ago and he came out ready to go today. So a lot of guys are very motivated. I think the series looks good.
BRUNO JUNQUEIRA: I feel really good. I think the PacifiCare Newman/Haas team did a great job during the winter. We had such a long winter, but you're still working hard and it's pretty good to come up in the first day of competition and show up, very competitive and end up the day in the front. That was a great result. I think that the race is very close between everybody.
Courtesy of CART
