The 500: A race of speed and stamina await Team Player's as
CART series shifts to the Fontana superspeedway
It is a race known simply as The 500, a thrill-packed 250 trips around the 2-mile California Speedway oval, a marathon that will test the endurance and the mettle of Team Player's drivers Patrick Carpentier and Alex Tagliani, along with their rivals in the FedEx CART Championship.
This is the setting for the penultimate event of the 2002 CART season, and when the drivers take to the track for Sunday's race, the speeds on the superspeedway, which routinely reach 225 miles an hour, will be a stark contrast to last weekend, when wet conditions drastically reduced speeds on the rain-soaked street course of Surfers Paradise in Australia.
"The difference is going to be like night and day," said Carpentier, who is heading to Fontana on the strength of a second-place podium finish, a performance that allowed him to move within 13 points of second place in the drivers' standings. "We saw last year just how special Fontana can be. You have cars going at tremendous speeds, sometimes three wide on the track, and it seems like the lead is constantly changing. There were 73 different lead changes last year and when it came to the end of the race, after 500 miles there were only a couple of inches separating the first two cars that crossed the finish line."
While Carpentier is seeking his first podium on the Fontana superspeedway - his best finish came last year when he was 10th - Tagliani earned a spot on the podium in 2001, when he ended the season with a flourish by winning the pole and then finishing third in the race.