Inaugural Grand Prix of St. Petersburg was a
pleasant surprise for Mi-Jack Conquest Racing's return to Champ Car racing.
source: CART.com Mario Haberfeld finishes as the top rookie in his first Champ Car appearance. The #34 car of Haberfeld was strong all day finishing just off the podium in 4th place and taking the lead in the chase for the Rookie of the year award. Stepping out of the car after the longest race of his career, Mario was obviously happy with the day's results. "It was a great day. The whole weekend was fantastic. We ran consistently in the top 8 all weekend and qualified 6th. I didn't know what to expect. My longest race was 1 hour and this was over 2 hours with pit stops. My engineer talked to me a lot and the team was perfect in the pit stops. Ford and Bridgestone did a perfect job. We will work even harder and see where we end." After starting 6th on today's grid, the rookie had a near incident early on with Newman/Haas's Bruno Junqueira dropping him back to 10th position. When asked about the incident after the race, Mario explains, "I am allowed one move to the inside which is what I did. Then I braked and he tried to brake later, but couldn't stop and was forced straight which meant I couldn't turn either. That dropped us both back about 5 spots." Mario managed to work his way back through the pack with aggressive driving and superb pit stops to finish.
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