Homestead Fla. March 2 — Dennis Swan, CART Chief Steward, issued the following statement tonight in regards to the Grand Prix of Miami, presented by Toyota.

"This was not a timing and scoring problem, rather a procedural problem with the realignment during a yellow.

During the realignment of the field in preparation for the restart on the last yellow, three cars on the lead lap moved forward on the crossed flag signal before the start/finish line and ahead of the other cars that, according to the procedure, should have been passed around the pace car and joined the back of the field. The cars that should have been passed around are No. 20 Scott Pruett, No. 99 Greg Moore, No. 4 Alex Zanardi and No. 17 Mauricio Gugelmin.

Because of the portion of the track on which the alignment took place - the start/finish line - and the fact that the cars that would normally be passed around were not passed around, an extra lap at that time was credited to the three cars - the No. 6 Michael Andretti, No. 3 Paul Tracy and No. 1 Jimmy Vasser.

After that lead-lap formation was in place, the No. 4 car passed the No. 17 under the yellow and Zanardi was penalized 25 seconds for this infraction.

Therefore, the stewards determined the official race distance at 147 laps on the 1.517-mile oval. That is consistent with Rule 6.22 in the CART rule book."

Source: CART News Service