More than seven years have passed since Mark Blundell set the record for closest margin of victory in a Champ Car race with his at-the-line pass of Gil de Ferran for the win at Portland International Raceway in 1997. But in many respects it seems like yesterday. source: champcarworldseries.com - John Oreovicz The Portland race marked the start of a remarkable run for Blundell and the PacWest team as he and teammate Mauricio Gugelmin combined to win half of the season's remaining races. Blundell added a flag-to-flag victory at Toronto (where he out-drove dominant two-time CART champion Alex Zanardi in a straight fight), and he was the first man to win an open-wheel race at California Speedway, besting Jimmy Vasser and Adrian Fernandez in the '97 season finale. Even when he was one of the top drivers in the Champ Car series, Blundell was sowing the seeds for his future by making occasional television appearances for ESPN in American and the BBC in his native England. These days, the 38-year old serves as ITV's in-studio analyst for British Formula 1 broadcasts, but that's just his day job. "Martin Brundle and I have created a company, 2MB Sports Management, and we're taking on a couple of young guys," Blundell related. "It's something we've been talking about for many years and we felt the timing was right to put ourselves in that position. We want to make it a turn-key experience for them so all they need to do is get in the racing car and drive without the hassles of doing anything else. They'll get 35 years of combined experience at the high end of international motorsport between us. It's early days, but we're enjoying it and we've got a couple of good kids on board." Blundell and Brundle have a lot of history together, back to the days when they caused utter confusion among Japanese broadcasters when the duo were teammates with the Brabham F1 team in 1991. The two Brits were teamed together at Ligier in 1994, and they still work alongside each other as part of the ITV F1 team, where Brundle serves as the in-booth commentator alongside play-by-play man James Allen. The complete story at champcarworldseries.com
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