Saturday night's Bridgestone presents the Champ Car World Series Powered
by Ford event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
source:
champcarworldseries.com
A late-season title run is normally something you would read about in the
Major League Baseball reports but Forsythe Championship Racing's Patrick
Carpentier (#7 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone) is putting together a late
charge of his own as he look to stay in the hunt for his first Champ Car World
Series title.
Coming off a pair of podium finishes that included a win at Mazda Raceway Laguna
Seca, Carpentier kept his hot streak going during Friday's qualifying for the
Bridgestone 400 Presented by Corona. The Las Vegas resident snared his first
pole of the season and the fifth of his career by carding a fast time of 26.190
seconds (206.186 mph) around the 1.5-mile Las Vegas Motor Speedway oval.
The pole not only gives Carpentier the top starting spot for Saturday night's
166-lap event, it also moves him into a tie for third place in the Bridgestone
Presents The Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford standings. The Canadian
driver earned a championship point for taking the Friday pole, giving him 215 on
the year and tying him for third with teammate Paul Tracy (#1 Indeck Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone).
The pole is the first for Carpentier since he took top honors at Laguna Seca a
year ago in a race he would go on to win from flag-to-flag.
Carpentier was joined on the front row by fellow Las Vegas resident Jimmy Vasser
(#12 Gulfstream Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone), who scored his first front-row
start of the 2004 season by hanging a time of 26.278 seconds (205.495 mph) on
the board. The second-place start for Vasser is his best since he won the pole
for the 2002 event at Long Beach, a race that he would dominate for most of the
day before settling for second.