Da Matta

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Cristiano da Matta hasn't had many bad days this season.

Friday was one of them.

Da Matta, the runaway points leader in the CART series, had to jump from his primary car to his backup in practice and again in the first round of qualifying for Sunday's Vancouver Molson-Indy.

"We had some fuel pressure problems and we changed a lot of components in the car but still couldn't find the problem,'' said da Matta, who leads fellow Brazilian Bruno Junqueira by 50 points as the Champ car season reached halfway.

"We hardly ran laps in practice and I was going to have to wait until qualifying to relearn the track,'' he said. "After my first lap in qualifying, the problem came back and we had to switch to the backup.

"Then I couldn't get a clear lap -- not even one.''

While Paul Tracy was winning the provisional pole and the championship point that goes with it, da Matta was 16th on the 18-car grid.

"The worst thing is that I don't even have any information to tell the engineers about the car so they can improve it,'' da Matta said. "It's the first time in my life that I'm going back to the hotel without having any idea of how to improve the car. I spent the whole day at the track and have no idea how my car is running.''

Meanwhile, Tracy was surprised to find himself at the front of the pack heading into the final round of qualifying on Saturday.

The Canadian driver was fast Friday with a lap of 1 minute, 1.888 seconds, or 103.600 mph -- but it wasn't the lap he was hoping for.

"My quick lap was really a warmup lap,'' Tracy explained. "I was getting to the fast lap when the red came out. I was frustrated at first, until I realized that was the end of the session.''

Junqueira's hard crash ended the 60-minute opening round of qualifying with just over 2 minutes remaining.

With the current format -- all the drivers competing in the same session and a maximum of 15 laps -- nobody generally takes to the track until the final 30 minutes of qualifying.

That also makes the final 10 minutes or so a real traffic jam, with all the fast drivers trying to find some clear space on the track to make an all-out run.

"I came out of the pits and I really hustled it the first two laps, trying to get some heat into my tires,'' said Tracy, who won here in 2000. "On the second lap, I had (Alex) Tagliani behind me and I was at 80 or 90 percent trying to stay in front of him. That turned out to be the quick lap.

"Talk to anybody out there and they'd all say they didn't get their quickest lap. It's just so hard to get a clean lap,'' added Tracy, who is guaranteed a front row start Sunday regardless of what happens in the second round of qualifying.

Junqueira's Team Target teammates, Scott Dixon and Kenny Brack, were the closest to Tracy's Team Kool Green Honda-powered Lola. Dixon's fast lap was 103.515 and Brack's 103.500.

Dario Franchitti, Tracy's teammate, was next at 103.430, followed by Christian Fittipaldi at 103.115, Michel Jourdain at 103.089 and Michael Andretti, the third Team Green driver and a three-time winner here, also at 103.089.

"The car just went left into the wall,'' said Junqueira, who escaped injury when the car bounced off two walls before slamming into a tire barrier. "Something happened to the car. We'll have to look at the data to see what happened.''

Da Matta has won five of nine races this season, but is coming off a race in which he scored no points, thanks to an engine failure. Combined with his troubles Friday, his rivals have hope.

"The championship is not over by any means,'' said Tracy, whose point on Friday left him 11th, 69 points behind da Matta. "We're only halfway through the season, and if a driver has a good stretch of races, he can rack up points real quick.''