Race No. 8

Budweiser/G.I. Joe's 200 Presented by Texaco/Havoline
Portland International Raceway
Portland, Oregon
June 18-20, 1999

Points leader Juan Montoya nabbed the third career pole of his storybook rookie season today at Portland International Raceway. Montoya, Helio Castro-Neves and Gil de Ferran all broke the track record set by last year's pole-sitter Bryan Herta, who rebounded from recent difficulties and qualified fourth.

While Montoya was typically nonchalant about latest achievement, (winning the pole on his first CART permanent road course) second-place Castro Neves was flashing an ear-to-ear grin. Helio's joy was matched only by his Mercedes and Lola engineers, who were genuinely surprised and delighted by their good fortune.

It had been widely assumed that Lola's sparkling performance on the short ovals would quickly come to an end once the schedule shifted to the road courses. Moreover, there has been much hand-wringing over the Mercedes driveability problem, which has prevented the current Mercedes engine from achieving a podium finish on a road course since its debut at the beginning of the 1998 season.

While other teams continued to struggle with the Lola and Merceds at Portland, Helio clocked a stunning lap time of 58.282, less than one tenth of a second behind Montoya's 58.193. The only other Mercedes qualifying in the top ten was Patrick Carpentier in 8th, and the next fastest Lola was Michel Jourdain Jr. all the way down in 24th. Helio appeared to be gunning for an even faster lap in the last minute of the qualifying session, but ran out of fuel and coasted into the pits as time expired.

There were a number of long faces on this beautiful sunny afternoon, the most dejected of all being Dario Franchitti. Coming into the weekend just three points behind Montoya, Franchitti was chomping at the bit to show off his road course prowess, and indeed ran the fastest time in the Saturday morning session with a 58.356, beating the old track record by two thousandths of a second.

Dario's qualifying effort was derailed by the Firestone technicians, who mounted his left rear tire backwards. All the drivers were using two sets of tires in the final qualifying session, shaking down the car and making final adjustments on the first set and pressing for the fastest time on the second set. When Franchitti exited the pits with his second set of tires, he experienced an immediate and drastic downturn in his car's handling: only after he finished the session qualifying 12th did he and the team discover the mounting error. The mistake, which could have been caught by Dario's crew, may have championship implications should Montoya harvest significantly more points than Dario in tomorrow's race.

Other drivers with furrowed brows included the veteran Toyota contingent of Scott Pruett, Robbie Gordon, Richie Hearn, and journeyman Gualter Salles, who will be driving Alex Barron's Toyota/Eagle/Goodyear car for the next three races to give owner Dan Gurney a "second opinion" on his proprietary chassis. While all four drivers were clustered in the tenth and eleventh rows, rookie Cristiano daMatta aced the bunch once again by qualifying his Toyota in 15th place, more than two tenths of a second faster than his more experienced Toyota colleagues. The once mighty Penske team were also had egg on their faces because of the quickness of a young driver, as Helio's second place qualifying performance was made on the same Mercedes-Lola combination that Al Unser Jr rumbled into the second-to-last row. Unser's occasional teammate Tarso Marques did a little better, qualifying his Mercedes/Penske in 18th position. Team Penske cannot blame Goodyear for their woes, as Gil de Ferran found the tires fast enough for third slot on the grid.

Helio proved at Nazareth that he can keep up with and even pass Montoya, so a dogfight may well be in store. Look for a possible jam-up at the start, as drivers become distracted by the jockeying around them and miss the braking point into the "festival" complex of initial turns. Hopefully there will be no repeat of Greg Moore's kamikaze charge to the front on the first lap of last year's event, which ended up knocking several cars out of the race.

The Grid