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With five weeks separating the season opener and the second race of 1997, Team Alumax and driver Patrick Carpentier are doing the best thing they can do during a lull: test.
So before Carpentier & Co. head down under for the April 6 Indy Carnival at Surfers Paradise, Australia, they will first head east to the Pennsylvania Speedway for three days of testing March 17-19.
For Carpentier, it will mark his first trip as an Indy car driver to a track where he has previously been victorious. Doubly so, in fact, as Nazareth was the site of his first-ever oval-track win in 1995 and the first of nine wins he would record en route to the 1996 title in the Players/Toyota Atlantic series.
"It will be interesting for me to drive an Indy car around Nazareth after racing Atlantics there," Carpentier pointed out. "I found out at Homestead how many differences there are between Indy cars and Atlantics, but at Homestead, we had run the Atlantics on a circuit that incorporated the oval and the road course. At Nazareth, it will be the first time I will be racing an Indy car on an identical track to one I had run in Atlantics.
"I'm glad we are testing at Nazareth because it is one of the few tracks we get to test on that we also race on. I think the test session and the CART Spring Training we did at Homestead helped us to be as competitive as we were when we came back there for the race in March. I know you cant test everywhere you race, especially with the number of street circuits we have, but it certainly helps when you can."
The trip to Nazareth Speedway presents something of a homecoming for Tom Brown, the chief engineer and managing director of Bettenhausen Motorsports, which campaigns the Team Alumax Reynard/Mercedes-Benz. Brown, who spent 11 years with Penske Racing, knows the Nazareth intimately, having been part of numerous tests conducted there.
"Nazareth is one of the ovals I like," Brown said" I've spent thousands of miles testing there. It will be great to get Patrick on a track where he can use downforce. We will be using the standard short-oval wings as opposed to the small speedway wings we used at Homestead.
"This test session will set us up for Nazareth, Rio, St. Louis and Milwaukee so that makes this test very important. We run on street circuits at Surfers Paradise and Long Beach and then we run the short ovals at Nazareth, Rio, St. Louis and Milwaukee.
In addition to winning the last two Atlantic races at Nazareth, Patrick Carpentier has also the distinction of setting the fastest qualifying lap ever in an Atlantic when he recorded a lap speed average of 159.49 miles per hour in 1995. That lap also earned him the pole position, one of four he captured in 1995.
Source: CART News Service