March 25, Homestead, Florida: With an eye on history and a flair for the dramatic, Gil de Ferran lifted the Penske curse today, taking the pole at his new sponsor's namesake event, the Marlboro Grand Prix of Miami. The Florida resident edged defending champion Juan Montoya by only six-thousandths of a second, with Adrian Fernandez taking third exactly one-hundredth of a second off the pace. It was Roger Penske's first pole since Paul Tracy topped the charts at Milwaukee in 1997, and represented a desperately-needed turnaround for a team that has suffered every possible disappointment in the intervening three years.A modest and thoughtful personality in the pressroom, de Ferran has recently developed a knack for theatrical exploits in qualifying. Only a year ago, as one of the few remaining Goodyear loyalists, de Ferran won the pole at the Firehawk 500, humiliating Firestone in their home country of Japan. At the close of today's windy qualifying session, de Ferran was at a loss for words, repeating over and over how "emotional" this pole was for him and his new team.
De Ferran was not overstating the case. The storied Penske Team has suffered one devastation after another since their dominant 1994 season, a year in which Al Unser Jr. took the championship and the Indy 500, and the three-car team of Unser, Paul Tracy and Emerson Fittipaldi won an astounding twelve of sixteen races. After failing to qualify for the Indy 500 in 1995, the team went on a steady consistent decline.
Throughout the bad years, Penske doggedly stuck with Junior, Marlboro, the proprietary chassis, the Mercedes engine and the Goodyear tires, and things got worse and worse. By 1998 the team was rarely competitive. The late-1998 announcement that the team would be reduced to a one-car effort was received by the paddock as a sign that perhaps Roger had lost the fire in the belly.
As the boss began charting a millennial course for massive change, tragedy stuck Marlboro Team Penske twice in the autumn of 1999, with the fatal accidents of Gonzalo Rodriguez at Laguna Seca and Greg Moore at Fontana. Rodriguez was one of several drivers that had been given seat time in the sometimes-used second Penske car, and Moore had signed a multi-million dollar contract to drive for Penske in 2000.
The subsequent Y2K restructuring of Marlboro Team Penske was so complete that the only unchanged elements are the owner, the sponsor the paint schemes, and the classic red driver uniforms: fireproof suits that remind Brazilians de Ferran and Castro-Neves of their childhood heroes, Emerson Fittipaldi and Ayrton Senna. Abandoning his custom-built Penske chassis, Roger purchased all new cars, engines and tires, selecting the Honda Reynard Firestone package that has given Chip Ganassi four consecutive championships. Meanwhile, Ganassi switched to a Toyota Lola, leaving Team Kool Green as the benchmark for Penske to evaluate his new team.
Among the surprises of today's qualifying were the divergent performance of the abovementioned teams Ganassi and Green. Chip Ganassi's bold Toyota play paid off splendidly today, with Montoya just missing the pole and Vasser qualifying tenth. On the other hand, Barry Green stuck with what worked in 1999, and his proud team was taken to school by Roger's new squad. The Penskes took pole (de Ferran) and 8th (Castro-Neves), while Green's pair of all-star drivers were confounded by setup difficulties and qualified 17th (Paul Tracy) and a 22nd (Dario Franchitti.)
The latter driver has been on his own cursed path of late, losing both the championship and his best friend at Fontana last November and then suffering a hard crash on this very track six weeks ago at Spring Training. When asked if he had fully healed from his injuries, Franchitti said "Physically, I feel fine. The only time I feel any pain is when I look at the timesheets."
Today's results brought unexpected joy and pain to a variety of drivers and teams. CART rookies Alexandre Tagliani (4th) and Kenny Brack (5th) got off to a great start, while superengineer Mo Nunn took little pleasure in his first qualifying session as a team owner, helpless as his driver Tony Kanaan could do no better than 15th. Michael Andretti surprised the paddock by forgoing his warm-up laps and qualifying sixth, explaining afterwards that he knew the car wasn't good enough for the pole and therefore opted to preserve his tires for the race. Will the veteran's gambit pay off tomorrow?
Mark Blundell started off the season with a bang, getting loose in turn four, slamming the wall, and sliding along the entire front straight before grinding to a halt. The crowd gave Blundell a standing ovation as he walked away from the ruined car unharmed.
Max Papis had his own brush with fate in Turn 4, but regained control of the car with a left-right-left shimmy. Interviewed after the near-miss, Papis confessed that the team had trimmed out the car too much, sacrificing downforce and stability that was costly in the gusty winds. "To be a champion," Papis observed, "you need to go for the edge. You can't leave anything on the table." With Honda, Toyota, and Ford qualifying 1-2-3, we'll see who lives by those words tomorrow.
