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2005 INDYCAR IRL - MOTEGI JAPAN

2005 INDYCAR CHAMPIONSHIP - R4, April 30, 2005 Twin Ring Motegi, Motegi, Japan

• COURSE:
• Twin Ring Motegi superspeedway
• Located 100 km from Tokyo
• 1.5mile / 2.5 km oval built in 1998 by HONDA
• Width 80 feet
• Banking: turns 10 degree; front stretch 1.7 degree; back stretch 5 degree
• LAST YEAR 2004 RESULT:
• 1 SCOTT SHARP, TOYOTA, DELPHI, 200 laps
  2 BRACK, HONDA +0.32s
  3 GIAFFONE, TOYOTA +1.4s
  4 ANDRETTI, HONDA +3.2
  5 UNSER, TOYOTA +6.3
  6 HORNISH JR, CHEV +1 lap
• RACE:
• 300 miles ; 200 laps

RACE RESULT

• 1 Dan Wheldon , Andretti-Green, Dallara-Honda 200 laps
  "everybody did a really good job with getting the best out of what we had. Certainly, as my experience level builds, that is the one thing that is made more and more apparent to me: you don't necessarily have to have the fastest car or best car in traffic to win. You've just got to basically make the best of what you have. If you do that, chances arise like today."
• 2 Scott Sharp +3.4
  "What a great day! All in all, we just had a really good car all day long. For me, it is just so gratifying to have a car to race with people. If I got held up in traffic, that was the only time people could pass me, and most of the time we could find a way to get back by them. It is really great to have such a 'raceable' car. The engineers and the guys did a great job. We made a bunch of changes before the race and I was thinking 'wow, I don't know' but it was right on. Look at Fernandez Racing's track record. They are great fuel mileage statisticians and it paid off today by a whisker as we ran out of fuel crossing the Start/ Finish line. This is great momentum to carry into Indianapolis."
• 3 Buddy Rice +21.8
  "Our Pioneer/Argent crew had the strategy today. We knew it was going to be a fuel race and we played it out. That's why I kept making pit stops late in the race with the yellow flags. We knew some of the leaders couldn't make it to the end and you saw that today. I think I did one hundred pit stops but it paid off. I don't know what was happening with (Tomas) Scheckter. We were both trying a lot of things and it was both of our faults. The IRL gave me a blocking penalty. Then I had to pit again after a rear tire puncture. I think I ran over some debris from one of the crashes. It was pretty wild out there at the start too. Once everything and everybody settled down the race got going and we were playing a conservative game with fuel. It's obvious we haven't had a good start to the season but this finish is good for the team entering Indy. "
• 4 Danica Patrick +22
  "The start was pretty exciting for me as I slid the car into turns one and three. I was able to hold off Sam and get into a rhythm. We had a good racecar today. You have to get the timing right entering the corners. I'm little upset at the end because we had to save so much fuel. But that also got us to the end. We knew we would have to save fuel throughout the race but it was frustrating as I was dropping back in the field. In the end, it paid off. Overall, it was a very good weekend by qualifying second and finishing fourth going to the Indy 500. It was a challenging race for the standpoint that you can't always drive the car as hard as you would like. You have to have patience too. And our team did a great job with the calculations today. Some of the other teams did calculate as well as ours. That made a big difference in the end."
• 5 Bryan Herta +29
• 6 Tony Kanaan
• 7 Sam Hornish Jr.
• 8 Darren Manning
• 9 Kosuke Matsuura
• 10 Tomas Scheckter
• 11 Castroneves 12 Briscoe 13 Carpentier 14 Foyt IV 15 Meira
• DNF: Franchitti, Dixon, Dana, Barron, Enge, Carpenter

QUALIFYING

GRID

• 1 Sam Hornish Jr. Dallara-Toyota 26.727s 204.740 mph
  "The cloud cover came by and the temperatures cooled down, so that definitely helped us. When we went out today in practice, we knew we wouldn't need much more downforce for qualifying. If we put too much downforce on the car for qualifying, it would have slowed us down on the straightaways."
• 2 Danica Patrick +0.031
  "I was so mad when we lost the pole, because we were so close. I still have a lot to learn. I just need to make sure tomorrow that I get in and out of the pits quickly, and feel comfortable with all the cars around me. I still don't know exactly what the cars does with the wind all the time, so I have a lot to learn."
• 3 Scott Sharp +0.037
  "I am just really excited. We worked on the car a lot yesterday and felt like we needed a little bit more, especially for qualifying. The engineering staff worked hard overnight and came up with some great changes. We were good this morning, and took even another step forward for qualifying. You just have to love it when a plan comes together like that. A lot of the changes we made obviously helped for today with the great qualifying spot and will help tomorrow. This is an important race for us. A lot of the Delphi Asia Pacific people will be here as well as a number of guests from Futaba so it is great to have the Delphi car starting up towards the front. Our job now is to make sure it is up there at the end of the day tomorrow."
• 4 Helio Castroneves
• 5 Dan Wheldon
  "I'm confident that we can make up for a lot and I'm pleased with where we are"
• 6 Tomas Scheckter
• 7 Vitor Meira
• 8 Dario Franchitti
  "I'm disappointed in our qualifying effort but confident that we'll have a good race car."
• 9 Kosuke Matsuura
• 10 Tony Kanaan
• 11 Rice 12 Manning 13 Briscoe 14 Carpentier 15 Herta
• 16 Barron 17 Dixon 18 Bucknum 19 Foyt IV 20 Carpenter 21 Yasukawa 22 Dana 23 Enge

RACE PREVIEW

• KANNAN: " Team 7-Eleven has been very fast and very competitive over the first three events of the season. We will continue to work hard, run up front in the field and win races whenever we have the opportunity. Motegi is a very important event for us due to our close relationship with Honda, and we want to have another strong performance for them at their 'home' track."
• HERTA: "Things change so quickly in this series that you can't ever assume that you're going to be good just because you were good at the last race. With Motegi being the last race before the Indianapolis 500, everybody's development is ramping up right now pretty heavily, so I'm sure there will be some new developments at Motegi. For the XM Satellite Radio team and Honda, it's important to have another good race to gain some momentum heading into the Indianapolis 500 and that's what we intend to do."
• FRANCHITTI:"The ArcaEx team has strong momentum right now, coming off two solid performances at Phoenix and St. Petersburg. Plus, we were very strong at Twin Ring Motegi last year, so we have a good feel for what it takes to be competitive at that track. If we keep working as we have been and running up front, eventually things will fall into place for us."