Sound familiar? Appreciative, confident, comfortable, maybe even a littlesassy. Those were the sentiments of Player's Forsythe Racing driver, GregMoore, following the first day of practice sessions leading to last year'sinaugural Motorola 300.

Even though Moore didn't fare so well in last year's event, finishing twolaps down in 13th place, his performance in this year's first five eventshave been spectacular to say the least. A charging second-place finish atHomestead to Michael Andretti, 5th at the inaugural Twin Ring Motegi, 6th atLong Beach following a late race stop for a splash of fuel, 3rd at Nazareth,and a brilliant late race pass overtaking Ganassi's Alex Zanardi in theTarget Reynard Honda to give the FedEx Championship Series it's fifth racewinner of the first five events.

Moore's consistency has led him to the FedEx Championship points lead, butby a slim margin to second place Alex Zanardi, 71-67 respectively. Down thelist to finish out the top five are Adrian Fernandez (Patrick RacingTecate/Quaker State Reynard Ford,) with 55 points, Jimmy Vasser (GanassiTarget Reynard Honda) with 39, and with 37 points, Bryan Herta in the TeamRahal Shell Reynard Ford. All of the top five cars are shod with Firestonetires, and all five roll on Reynard chassis.

The only decerning manufacturers battle in the top five are the enginepackages with Mercedes, Honda, Ford, Honda, and Ford carrying thehonors...in that order.

Gateway's unique egg-shaped 1.25 mile oval has been touted by drivers as afast and competitive circuit, so much so that CART used the facility inApril to test new speedway configuration wings meant to provide more dragand less downforce to slow the cars down. Michael Andretti had this to sayfollowing the testing sessions.

"The car has a lot more downforce [oh well] than the 1997 Swift.It's much more stable and overall we have made great gains since lastseason. The track at Gateway is good, but it has bumps in turns three andfour — otherwise, I like it."

In all, tests conducted by Goodyear drivers Michael Andretti, Al Unser, Jr,and P.J. Jones averaged a lap-speed reduction of about 1.25 seconds ascompared to times posted during sessions last Memorial Day Weekend. We'llsoon see the result, and my guess would be a new track record.

There will be three full hours of coverage for the Motorola 300 beginningwith Cart qualifying on ESPN2, Friday at 5:00pm EDT. Then "CART2Day" willair on ESPN2 at 12:30pm, followed by live race coverage from 1:00pm to3:00pm EDT.