Race No. 16
Honda Grand Prix of Monterey
featuring the Texaco/Havoline 300
Lagnua Seca Raceway
Monterey, CaliforniaSeptember 11-13, 1998
Saturday Quotes from Laguna Seca:| ADRIAN FERNANDEZ | DARIO FRANCHITTI | BRYAN HERTA |
| SCOTT PRUETT | PAUL TRACY | JIMMY VASSER |
 | Shell Team Rahal Reynard Ford |
| BRYAN HERTA | |
| [Getting the car repairedafter Friday morning's contact with Alex Zanardi was] the biggestsingle thing we did good this weekend. After some damage to thecar yesterday, the crew really busted themselves to get the carready for today. After seeing the problems the slower group had[today], the advantage of a little more green [flag] time gave uswhat we needed to go for it. This is a track where starting up frontis certainly an advantage, but the determination is no greater orless than it was at Vancouver or before that, at Elkhart Lake.Through all this [the quest for his first victory], I've tried to maintainmy own self-confidence and believe in the things I've done in thepast which have gotten me to this point in my career. You want tokill that frustration. If nothing else, when it does happen, it'll beespecially sweet for all those reasons. | |
 | Target Chip Ganassi Racing Reynard Honda |
| JIMMY VASSER | |
| We made somechanges, but I still don't have the car where I want it. I don't knowif anyone does. I had a hard time putting a lap in yesterday. Thedifference today was a little bit of handling. The difference wasthat we were able to keep working with the car and we were ableto put a good one [lap] in. | |
 | Visteon Reynard Ford |
| SCOTT PRUETT | |
| The Visteon car is a lot faster than what we showed today. Unfortunately the qualifying session wasa mess. Guys were spinning off the track and there were a couple of engine failures. We never got achance to get a good solid run with new tires. Every time I had a good lap going, something wouldhappen on the track. The Visteon guys did a good job today. The car is fast. We will see whathappens tomorrow. | |
 | Team Kool Green Reynard Honda |
| DARIO FRANCHITTI | |
| I'd love to sit hereand tell you that if we'd have had that eight minutes [lost due to apenalty incurred during provisional qualifying Friday] we'd havebeen on the pole, but I don't know if I believe that myself. I justthink we didn't have the balance on the car that we needed tochallenge Bryan. The track was very slick, and to get one goodlap in was very difficult. | |
 | Team Kool Green Reynard Honda |
| PAUL TRACY | |
| The car's not good. We're struggling with loose entry, mid-corner understeer and it's loose coming off of the corners. Everything you don't want a car to do, it's doing. We didn't have a good test here prior to Vancouver. We ran well at Vancouver, but that's a different track than here. I spun on my own. It just happened to be at the same time that Castro-Neves put down oil and Pruett spun. It had nothing to do with me. I don't think the eight-minute penalty hurt us that much. It gave us time to think about the car and we made a few changes but it didn't help. The car's not right and you're not going to fix it in 30 minutes. It's frustrating because I've been on the pole and won here. It's not like I don't know how to get around this track. | |
 | Tecate Beer/Quaker State Patrick Racing Reynard Ford |
| ADRIAN FERNANDEZ | |
| We had some mechanical problems develop on the Tecate/Quaker State car early in the qualifyingsession. Because of those problems we lost a lot of time in the pits so we were not able to try all thethings we wanted to try. The set-up for today's conditions wasn't as good as we had yesterday so I wasn't able to run laps asquick as I was in provisional qualifying. We just have to learn from today and make the proper changes. The Tecate/Quaker State teamshould be okay for tomorrow. | |