Richards: "Hello everybody. This is Ron Richards with CART, down here in Rio de Janeiro. We've finished qualifying for today, and perhaps some of you have seen, through our internet site or some other means, that Mauricio Gugelmin is on the pole. He set a record here today running a speed of 171.912 miles per hour, breaking Alex Zanardi's record of one year ago of 167.084mph. This is the first pole for Mauricio, as well as the first pole for his team, the PacWest team. Also, it's of interest, obviously, that Mauricio is from Brazil. I think everybody would be interested to know that the enthusiasm is running very high for Mauricio and what he accomplished today."

Mo: "Well - pretty tough. Every year it just gets worse. CART competition is just getting really tough for the drivers. Rio is really a unique circuit. We have two tight corners, turn one and turn four, and then two long straights. So it's not very difficult to get the car balanced. As you can see, the grid is very, very close. I'm sure tomorrow we're going to produce a very good show because there is going to be a lot of passing and a lot of drafting to pass people. It just feels great to be on the pole for my home country anyway."

Mo: "This morning I got up to 211mph on the straight, but that was a little bit of a tow [drafting]. Really it's usually just under 210. Through the corners, it's just below 120 on turn one, and a little bit slower...about 115 on turn four. That's the minimum speed. There's a big variation as we come down the straight and then we brake very hard and go down to third [gear] for both corners, turns one and four."

Richards: "As you mentioned Doug, the grid is very close. In fact, as I sit here and look at it, the first seventeen cars are separated by nine-tenths of a second, Muaricio's time being 39.034. Then we go down to Adrian Fernandez with a 39.941 in seventeenth position. Just so you know, Roberto Moreno, another Brazilian, was second quick in the Newman Haas car, that he's filling-in for Christian Fittipaldi in. Bobby Rahal was third quick, in his best qualifying effort of the season. His team mate, Bryan Herta, was fourth quick, and he and Rahal had identical fast laps. Rahal's second lap being quicker than Herta's put him third on the grid, and Paul Tracy is fifth quick on the grid. So we have a Mercedes, three Fords, and another Mercedes [at the front of the grid.]"

Walt with KMOS Radio: "Mauricio, congratulations on your first pole. We were hoping that maybe you'd get your first pole in St. Louis at Gateway, but that's OK, you did it down in Rio."

Mo: "Well the timing was better here, but in St. Louis, I will certainly be trying too. It's the Motorola 300, who is one of our other sponsors on the team. Hopefully Mark Blundell [Mo's PacWest team mate] can get one there. That would be great for the team."

Walt: "How fast are you going on the straightaways down at Rio?"

Mo: "210, and occasionally a little bit higher than that, and sometimes a little bit slower. It depends on how the wind is, and if you're getting a draft or not. That's the top speed we get here."

Mo: "Yes it is. The Brazilians, even without excitement like this, are already pretty crazy, so you can imagine how it's going to be tomorrow if a Brazilian wins the race. It's a pretty big race for the country. We feel proud because Brazil is pretty well represented in CART, with so many different drivers and so many different teams. This Rio race is very important for our championship too. I feel really good that it happens to be the Hollywood Rio 400, which is my main sponsor. The timing was just perfect."

Sprouse: "It's not only your first pole, but PacWest's first pole as well. How has the team reacted to that?"

Mo: "They deserve all the compliments. We've worked together for a few years now. It's just one of those marriages that's working together really well, and it just gets better by the day. I keep telling the guys that they are really the ones that did the job, and I was just the lucky one to get to drive the car and make it perform. They gave me a car that was well balanced and I did two good laps with it. Tomorrow I'm sure we're going to be hunting for our first win."

Mo: "We started the season pretty strong at Homestead, qualifying second, and finishing sixth in that race. Since Spring Training, I've really felt that we could fight for the championship. That's what we're aiming for. Every day we go out and try to be the fastest and try to win races. Of course, in CART racing, the competition is so tough this year, it makes it very hard. We have four races and four different winners. Tomorrow will be the fifth one, and I'll just keep working as hard as I can, and see where we get towards the end of the season. My inspiration is to do the best I can for my team, and I think, hopefully, that will be good enough to fight for the championship."

Mo: "In our sport you depend a lot more on different things like how the car is, and how the mechanics did their job. I do believe that the best way to get the performance out of a Brazilian driver is in Brazil. I have no doubt about that. That helps because the crowd is behind you, and you want to show that you can drive on the limit every time you go out. You have to be careful and make sure that you control that. We are all professional race drivers, and that's what we get paid to do. I feel pretty good about it, and today has been a great day."

Janet B. - IRace: "Mauricio, can you tell me what changed from yesterday and you winning the pole today? From what I saw, Michael Andretti was fastest on Saturday."

Mo (and Richards): "Actually, Michael was fastest on Friday. I think they just unloaded their cars with a little bit better set up than we were. We managed to catch up today. Roberto Moreno, who I stand by for second place, and who drives the same car as Michael's, are running pretty strong. It's just that I feel we got the best out of our car to qualify, and that's what put us on the pole."

Janet: "Can you tell me anything about what you changed, or when you made the changes?"

Mo: "It's a combination of small changes. There wasn't anything major wrong with my car. Basically, I had some push coming out of turn four, but I got that fixed. And then I had a looseness coming out of [turn] one this morning, and we got that fixed. Right now I have a perfectly balanced car, with a good Mercedes engine at my back, and some good Firestone tires holding me around [the track]. The package has made me get results."

Mo: "No. Rio is a unique track for this [configuration]. I'm sure it's going to produce a great race. It's kind of nice, because it's something different. We call it the 'roval'...a mix of road course and oval."

Mo: "I think, to be fair, in Brazil there's still space for there to be both Formula One and CART racing. The fact is, we are getting more and more popular with CART, and there are more Brazilian drivers doing better at CART than there are in Formula One. Not because they are necessarily better drivers, but because they happen to be with more competitive teams than the ones that are driving Formula One. This is great for the sport, and it's great for us. I have been a Formula One driver, and I must tell you that I enjoy my life a lot more now than in the past."

Mike Hollander - Racing Information Systems: "Can you tell us what the differences are that put you on the pole and put your team mate back in row ten?"

Mo: "I didn't have a chance to talk with Mark [Blundell]. For sure, he had an unbalanced car or some kind of a problem. We basically run the same kind of equipment, and, of course, he didn't have such a good start last year around here. In the straight-aways, my car seems to be working better than his. Right after winning the pole, I've been talking with a lot of people, and I haven't found out if he had any kind of problems with his car, but I suspect he has. He's a better driver than for there to be that difference between myself and him."

Hollander: "I notice that the first nine rows of cars are within the same second as far as qualifying. Did you have anything that felt like a perfect lap that you felt got you to the pole?"

Mo: "Yeah - my second lap was as perfect as it's going to get. That's what did it. Actually, if you go through the times, I had a little bit of a gap [from my self to Moreno]...about two tenths, and then on back it's just nose to tail."

Richards: "As Mauricio said, as I look down this grid, that's the biggest gap between any two cars through the first nine rows. Like Mauricio said, [it had to be] a near perfect lap."