Former British F3 champ heads Stateside
source: autosport.com
Former British Formula
3 champion Mario Haberfeld will race in CART next year for Eric Bachelart's
Conquest Racing team, which has bucked the recent trend and is moving over from
the rival IRL series.
This year, Conquest took Laurent Redon to the
rookie of the year honours, but is switching codes after purchasing Forsythe
Racing's 2002 Reynards, which won races in Patrick Carpentier's hands. Conquest
is the first team to commit to running the 02I rather than the ubiquitous Lola
chassis.
Since winning the British F3 title in 1998, Haberfeld has spent
four seasons racing in Formula 3000. Now he's looking forward to a new
challenge.
"One of the reasons for my decision is the people involved in
the team," said Haberfeld. "The roots of the team are from Europe, and that's
what I'm used to. Eric won the Indy Lights title in 1992, and raced in CART
himself. The team manager is Chris Mower [son of Derek Mower who owned the
Nordic F3000 team that ran Justin Wilson to the Championship in 2001], and one
of the engineers will be Andy Miller who was my engineer at Paul Stewart Racing
when I won the British Formula 3 Championship in 1998."
Haberfeld expects
his first test to be on January 25 and 26 at Laguna Seca. "Our car is the one
that Patrick Carpentier took to third place in the 2002 Championship. As the
rules are frozen, hardly anything can change with the aerodynamics, so we should
maintain the competitiveness for 2003. There will be a lot of new drivers in
2003, and my goal is to win rookie of the year - it's a valued title in American
racing."