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Sunday, September 2
Tearful Moreno wins in Vancouver
Associated Press
| |  | | | Moreno |
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- As the tears began flowing
five laps from the end of the Vancouver Molson Indy, Roberto Moreno
gave himself a little pep talk.
"I thought, 'No, you don't do this or you'll put the car in the
wall and all your hard work will go away."'
The tears dried -- at least until the checkered flag waved -- and
Moreno, who passed Gil de Ferran for the lead nine laps from the
end, held on to become the ninth driver to win in 14 CART races
this season.
The 42-year-old Brazilian, the oldest driver in the FedEx
Series, thanked his team over and over with with a choked voice
after crossing the finish line nearly 5 seconds -- a full
straightaway -- ahead of de Ferran, the defending series champion
and the new points leader.
"It was a difficult race today," said the emotional Moreno,
who worked hard to hold back more tears after getting out of his
Patrick Racing Reynard-Toyota following a tire-smoking celebration
on his cooldown lap.
Moreno and de Ferran passed each other several times during the
race, but the last pass was decisive.
"I was lucky he came out of one of the corners a little
sideways," Moreno said. "I got up beside him and there was no way
I was going to lift."
De Ferran, who came into the race trailing Marlboro Team Penske
teammate Helio Castroneves by 11 points and Kenny Brack by six, now
leads by five over both Castroneves and Brack with six races
remaining. Michael Andretti, who finished third, moved back into
the title race, trailing de Ferran by just 13 points.
Most of the race day crowd of 63,385 was disappointed when
Canadian driver Alex Tagliani, who started from the pole and led
the first 69 laps of a scheduled 100-lap race on the 1.781-mile,
12-turn temporary street circuit, was eliminated from the race by
an engine failure.
The race went only 98 laps because of a 2-hour, 10-minute time
limit imposed by CART.
As smoke erupted from the rear of Tagliani's car, Team Player's
teammate and countryman Patrick Carpentier, who was second, was
making his final pit stop, giving the lead to Moreno, who was then
able to make his last stop under caution.
Both Moreno and de Ferran were behind Mauricio Gugelmin for the
restart on lap 80, but de Ferran was able to get past both of them
to take the lead. It stayed that way until Moreno took advantage of
the mistake by de Ferran on lap 92.
"I was pushing hard to stay ahead of him," de Ferran said.
"Unfortunately, I made a small mistake and hit the inside wall and
had to get out of the throttle for a moment. that was it."
Moreno, whose only other CART victory came on July 2, 2000, in
Cleveland, said, "I started crying in the car after the checker
and I almost lost it into the wall. This is wonderful."
When asked about rumors that he is driving to keep his job,
Moreno said, "Don't say that. I'm a professional race driver and
our team is getting better and better. It takes time to get
everything together."
The race was particularly disappointing for Castroneves, who
wound up 18th despite running to the end, and Tagliani, who fell to
23rd.
Castroneves lost one lap after being hit from behind by Brack at
the start, then lost two more laps when his car stalled later in
the race. He ran some of the fastest laps in the race but never
made up the lost ground.
Tagliani, a second-year driver who has yet to win his first CART
race, said, "It just started doing some noise and I tried going
into the corner with some different gears, but then it just blew
up. It's sad because I wanted to win my first race in Canada."
Andretti was followed across the finish line by Tony Kanaan,
Oriol Servia, Michel Jourdain Jr., Tora Takagi and Brack, who also
made contact with Carpentier on the last restart.
Max Papis had the most serious accident of the day, slamming
hard into a tire barrier after a mechanical failure. The Italian
driver was sore but not injured.
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