Cristiano da Matta repeated his routine and his success Sunday afternoon. source: CART.com - Robin Miller He started smartly, picked his way through the field, received great pit work and wound up in victory lane. In the process of winning the Grand Prix Americas, his seventh victory of the season, the talented 29-year-old Brazilian also clinched the 2002 CART FedEx Championship Series title with three races remaining. He beat Newman/Haas Racing teammate Christian Fittipaldi by 0.734 of a second in his Chevron Toyota/Lola to give his adopted hometown crowd a perfect ending to CART's first street race here since 1995. Starting sixth, da Matta took advantage of a tangle between front-row mates Tony Kanaan and Scott Dixon to take the lead on Lap 24. He led 58 of the 105 laps--including the final 18--to join Michael Andretti, Al Unser Jr., Alex Zanardi and Juan Montoya on the list of drivers with seven or more wins in one year. He also gave Carl Haas and Paul Newman their fourth CART title and the first for Toyota. "Starting sixth I was not expecting to win the race, but other guys made mistakes and we didn't and it seems like it's been like that many times this year," said da Matta, who also earned the Vanderbilt Cup and $1 million that accompanies it. "It feels great to win the championship--almost impossible to explain--but winning the race today even makes it better." Haas and Newman were spraying champagne and praising their first champion since Nigel Mansell in 1993. "That little guy is a helluva driver--very fast and very smart," said Haas, who hired the 1998 Indy Lights champion to replace '91 CART champ Michael Andretti in 2001.
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