©1998 SpeedCenter Internet Publishing, Inc.
By Peter Burke, photos Taylor & Taylor
| Between the thousands of faces at Long Beach, a few looked familiar from other racing series. There was for exampleArie Luyendyk and his IRL team owner Fred Treadway walking the paddock. They are reportedly very close to securing the needed funding to switch from the IRL to racing Champ Cars. Itis well known that Treadway would like to follow Della Penna and field a team in CART. Arie, although a front runnerin the IRL and winner of the 1997 Indy 500, has always kept the door open to return to racing that on occasion visits tracks thatmake drivers turn right. His last race in CART was the Marlboro 500 in 1997, filling in for the injured Alex Zanardi at Target Ganassi Racing. |   |
Another well known face was spotted in the paddock on Sunday, walking with Andrew Craig towards the CART hospitality area.Bernie Ecclestone, a man who has previously raced at the beach in Long Beach, was walking there, unrecognized by thousandswho were squeezing past the souvenir booths in search for that perfect Rahal's Last Ride memorabilia. We also saw several FIAphotographers around the track. Could it be that FIA is checking out the US open wheel market for a possible return to the US? One thing is for sure: they got to see the kind of racing the US fans enjoy.
A more familiar face was that of Robby Gordon. He is slated to take the wheel of a Arciero Wells Champ Car in the near future, possibly as early as the Nazareth event, with Hiro retiring after Rio (Hiro and Rio rhymes...). Rumor has it that he may be interested in filling in for Ricky Craven in Winston Cup. The overlap of races between CART and Winston Cup could become a real problem for him.However - he was seen on Wednesday, testing for Arciero at Nazareth, which supports his commitment to CART.
Gualter Salles' qualifying position was the best ever for Payton/Coyne Racing. What barely made the news is that there was a quite familiar face eating lunch at Payton Coyne: Has Dick Simon been brought in to help the team get back to the form they were inlate in 1997? While Jourdain Jr. still struggles to get a decent result, Gualter Salles found the speed to impress possible future employers. Did Dick Simon have anything to do with that? And what about Simon racing at Indy this year? Is he still going to do it?
Over at Project Indy we spotted a face seen last in 1995. Wearing a Harley Davidson rain jacket, Mimmo Schiattarella stood next to a car that was much more advanced than the old Lola "Indycar" he last wrestled down the cockscrew in late 1995. With no prior practice, hehad barely enough time to get up to speed with the new car at Long Beach. The team has not announced who will be driving the car at Nazareth.
And talking of Nazareth: PacWest will finally load their '98 cars into their transporters. Their gamble to run the '97 chassis and engines for the early part of the season to wait for engine electronics in the new engine to be fully developed cost them a lot ofmomentum. The old cars apparently were not running as good as they thought they would. Nazareth will show it it was just the old cars, or if the team needs to improve in other areas, too.
