Start your engines!
Play RPM.ESPN Stock Car Challenge!
Win a Honda S2000!
Play The CART Challenge powered by Honda!
|
|
Thursday, August 16
Fittipaldi always strong at Road America
By Christian Fittipaldi
Special to ESPN.com
It's been a long time since I sent a diary because the series has had one race right after another and we have made appearances and press tours for our sponsors and Toyota in between races.
After the Toronto race, my wife Andrea and myself went to Paul Newman's "Hole in the Wall Gang Camp" and had a good time with the kids there. Paul is a great role model overall, but when it comes to charity involvement, I've never met anyone who is as dedicated as he is. He has always had a busy schedule, but he manages to spend time on worthwhile causes and makes a huge difference.
|  | | Christian Fittipaldi, left, with team owner Paul Newman, would love to get back to Victory Lane this weekend. |
Well, it's definitely a different part of the championship race right now. We're back on the road courses and up until now, we've only had one good experience on a road course -- a third-place finish at Portland.
So, I wouldn't say we are too happy, because at the same time we have a couple of good oval set-ups, but also have some oval set-ups that in some places aren't very good. We have some oval tracks that we're very strong on, but it's nice to come into a different time of the championship and get back to the road and street courses.
I think that at any part of the season you really have to be up there in contention and try to go for it. It's not because you're running four road courses that you're giving a lot stronger effort or that you're going to be more motivated to come to these places.
I think you really have to be prepared to advance in any part of the season and that's definitely what we're trying to do. There's still half of the season ahead of us and there's still a lot of championship ahead -- beginning with this weekend.
I'm very happy that our next race is in Elkhart Lake, Wis. The track is for sure one of the nicest courses of the whole schedule and it reminds me a lot of Spa in Belgium -- and I really enjoy that place. Four miles is a very long lap, especially in qualifying.
It's unbelievably difficult for you to put a whole quick lap together because there's so many turns and so many braking areas that you always have a tendency to over-drive one corner or lose a couple of tenths of a second somewhere. Due to it's variety of corners, it's the hardest track to get a perfect qualifying lap. The car must always be compromised in some parts of the circuit.
When it comes to qualifying, I think it's the most important thing we face at Elkhart Lake. Racing there, in my opinion, is a lot calmer than qualifying.
Elkhart Lake has always been very good to me. For one reason or another we always do well in Elkhart Lake and I have always run in the top-four there. Last year I was running second and had to stop because of a fire (caused by an exhaust failure).
Of all the years I have competed at Road America, the race I enjoy the most was Elkhart Lake 1997 -- which wasn't even the race I won there. On Friday of that weekend, the car was very hard to drive and I even ended up in gravel at the end of the qualifying. The next day, Saturday, it rained, so our qualifying was based by what happened Friday.
Even though I started 18th, I used the first part of the race, which was wet, to come through the field. When I was in about eighth place, it started to dry out and I ended the race in fourth -- and we even had an electrical problem, which put us down about 40 percent on engine boost. It was a hard race, especially when we were going from wet to dry conditions.
Of all the years we went there, 1997 was the only year I did not run in the top-three, but ended the race in fourth which was good considering the lack of engine power.
It's very good to go back to Road America. The team is just down the road from Elkhart Lake. We have a lot of people come to the race and I remember in '99 when I won the race and Michael Andretti (then a teammate) finished second, it was one of those dream weekends for the team.
We had qualified the cars in the top four and we finished the race first and second. A lot of sponsors were there, a lot of friends were there and it couldn't have been better.
I'm very optimistic about this weekend and hopefully we can repeat what we did in 1999 with a win.
Kmart Toyota driver Christian Fittipaldi provides a diary for ESPN.com throughout the CART season. You can check out Christian's web site at http://Fittipaldionline.com. Send this story to a friend | Most sent stories
|
|
|
|
