CART FedEx Championship Series: Gran Premio Telmex-Gigante

Topics:  Gran Premio Telmex-Gigante

Chris Kneifel
John Lopes
Chris Pook
November 16, 2002

MEXICO CITY, MEXICO

ADAM SAAL: We'll get started. As most of our friends in the Mexican press know, we began what's been a very action-packed year in the FedEx Championship Series with a state-of-the-art press conference in Monterrey, up north in Monterrey. We just thought it would be appropriate to spend some time again with our media friends from all over the world, including our gracious hosts here in Mexico, to have a similar press conference. At Monterrey you may recall we did introduce several rules we enacted at that race, designed to improve the competition throughout the entire season. We'll hear from John Lopes, our vice president of racing operations, as well as our chief steward, Chris Kneifel, to hear how some of those rules went this year, what worked, what didn't work, perhaps what we'll use for next year, maybe a few more surprises for next year we could detail. However, we are privileged to have with us our president, CEO, Chris Pook, who was scheduled to join us yesterday. We were working on some announcements for 2003. We're going to give you two for the price of one today. Chris, if you could open up with some comments about how this season has gone for you, where you feel we've made some accomplishments and where we need to go.

CHRIS POOK: Good morning. First of all, I think I'd like to talk about this event for one second, to congratulate the organizers, not only on the building of a really superb facility with such a tremendous tradition to it, but just in their promotion of the event. You can't go anywhere in this great city without knowing there's a motor car race taking place at this facility. They are to be congratulated in just everything they've done. Their presentation, promotion, the racetrack itself, the working quarters for our teams and the working quarters for the media, it's just really outstanding. As you know, we started the year, we told you we would be a work in progress. We wanted to make some changes throughout the year. We wanted to bring back, if we could, some racing into the racing. I think by and large our officials, under the direction of John Lopes, our vice president of operations, and Chris Kneifel, our chief steward, have done an outstanding job. I think last weekend, two weekends ago at Fontana, the fact that Chris for the second time this year was able to implement his red flag rule with a few laps to go, and clearly we had a difficult situation on the racetrack, I think that was an outstanding call. The rule was designed to do that. He followed the rule. As you know, we had a great finish for the fans under the green flag. People tend to forget that the same thing was done in Vancouver. We had a huge accident just before the end. The race was red flagged, then finished under the green flag. All that's very, very positive, indeed. Clearly next year, different engine formula with the standard Cosworth turbocharged engine at 750 horsepower. We're going to, we believe, bring a lot more racing back in. I think some of the things that are forgotten here a little bit is that the chassis that these guys are driving are chassis designed for 750 horsepower motors, they were not designed for 900 horsepower motors. I think we've got a situation at hand here where the chassis has not kept up with the development of the motor. This is not Formula 1 where if a motor picks up 10 or 15 horsepower, the chassis gets redesigned. As we go into 2003, when you have 750 horsepower motors driving these chassis, you're going to see a whole different level of competition on the racetrack. We will continue to look at our rules wherever we can - John and Chris can talk to that - to see where we can effect some rule changes that will maintain the integrity of the competition, but at the same time will pick up the level of the competition. That's important. That's the job of a sanctioning body. At the end of the day, we must put on a competitive race. As you know, this year we've had incredibly competitive qualifying. It's been really a tremendous year for that. Some of our races have lacked a certain amount of the passing for the lead that the media and the audience wanted. We've had some tremendous passing in the field, had some good strategies in the pits, but at the end of the day what we must do is make sure we have really good racing on the racetrack. We continue to move forward in our rule package looking at 2005. Work has already started on what the engine package will look like in that year. Very shortly we're opening up the conversation to the chassis manufacturers as to what the chassis should look at. I'm on record as saying in 2005 we want to have a V10, normally aspirated, gasoline-powered engine, developing about 750 horsepower, with a 1,200-mile life to it, that's important for us in the presentation, and of course on-board starters which we think are absolutely critical. By and large, I think we've had a good year. We've got obviously another great qualifying session to take place this afternoon, and another great race tomorrow. I thank you in the media for your support as we move forward. At times you've been critical of us and we've been critical of you, but that's fair enough, that's what it's all about. Good dialogue. As I said earlier this year, I have no difficulty with taking the heat as long as when the time comes to write about some of the good things we've done, you don't forget to write about that. I think by and large that has happened with the media. I thank you very much, indeed, for your support in that area.

JOHN LOPES: Several things transpired over the past year. I think that is really a credit to Chris Kneifel and Lee Dykstra, our director of technology and competition, who spent the last two nights in the hospital here with a little bit of perhaps Montezuma's revenge. He is healthy and back at the hotel. I think one of the biggest areas we gained this year was in the technology side of the house, improving our ability to enforce the rules. We implemented a new technical inspections system, which I would encourage you to take a look at our Buckeye system, we're quite proud of it. Also we were able this year to improve our circuit development efforts. That's come quite a long way. On the electronics decide, Kevin came to us from Ford via Jaguar, and he helped us manage, I believe, what was a very sticky situation earlier in the year with traction control. I think that is one of the significant areas we've improved in this year. We've been able to manage we like to call them land mines of the past, like the pop-off valve situation, which seems ages ago at this point. We had a developing situation earlier this year with traction control. In our cooperation with the manufacturers, both Toyota, Honda, Ford as well, worked with us to manage that situation along with the people on the technical staff. We're quite proud of that. I might add, CART would like to thank Honda and Toyota for their participation and support over all these years. We're going to miss them, but we look forward to having them back in the future and look forward to moving forward with our relationship with Cosworth. I think the other significant thing is the franchise board has been moving in lock step with management. That's been quite key in enacting new rules. In terms of what we've accomplished this year, that's where we've been at. In terms of next year, you're going to see the high downforce package on the short ovals next year. We believe that's extremely important to get the cars side by side again. With a little bit less horsepower in the Cosworth package and the high downforce cars, you're going to see side-by-side racing as we did years ago in CART. We're also going to most likely be eliminating the mandatory pit stop window. There's been some discussion about that. It worked well in Fontana this year; other places it did not. In general, we believe the more rules we enact, the more we create artificial racing. Less is more in that kind of situation. You'll probably see those go away. Also something important for Chris Kneifel is the ability as a steward to apply fundamental fairness to the rule making. This year we had several situations where the stewards by the rule book had to make the call that necessarily wasn't fundamentally fair. A good one to point to is Adrian Fernandez at Rockingham this year, was brought in for a penalty for speeding on the pit lanes. At that time Adrian actually was only a couple one-thousandths of a second in excess of the speed limit. The way the rule book reads, the penalty has to be applied right at the speeding mark. In the future, Chris will be able to use his discretion. Other than that, I think next year you're going to see an awful lot of exciting racing with some cagey veterans and some very hungry young rookies coming in, some Europeans, Mexicans, as well as Canadians. You'll probably see 10 countries represented.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: John and Chris touched on most of the important things. The one thing we missed there was taking the fuel mixer knobs out of the car. Since we're doing a single-brand manufacturer, we're not going to be in the fuel economy game anymore. We will take the fuel stop windows out. On the fundamental fairness that John talked about, it really is very frustrating as a race official knowing that you're spoiling a guy's day for a relatively minor infraction, being it lifting an air hose in the pits, a minor pit violation. It hurts me and the guys I work with as much as it hurts the competitors. We want to get rid of that. We're taking good measures and steps so it will allow us to enforce penalties when there's been an unfair gain or someone doing something that was on the wrong side of the law. But if there was no performance advantage, no gain, you can almost go on the no-harm, no-foul. We're going to work very hard on a number of areas so we can get the rule book tailored so we can do that. The other thing we're going to do in terms of correction is we're going to set it up with the rule book so we can take our time in some cases to make some of the calls. To use an analogy that Chris Pook used, where we raise the yellow flag, let the teams and participants involved know they're under scrutiny for any given situation. In a given period of time, we will be able to make a final determination and either call a penalty or no penalty in that case. There's a lot of things that we're going to do to that will really change the way that we do business. To me it's very exciting. Again, in terms of producing better-quality racing, part of that is not chopping a guy's head off for something that wasn't really necessary. I'm very excited about that. The other thing is we're looking to really do a good job in terms of upgrading the quality of people we have. I always see change as being a good thing. I'm very excited to see new guys that are hungry, new blood coming into the series. You see guys with fire, new blood, that's exciting to watch. To touch on what Adam suggested, some of the highs and lows. I think the lows are pretty obvious. To me, I'm always very positive and very upbeat. Just being part of this series and knowing that the leadership that we have here at CART is taking us in a formidable direction, it's a great team to be part of, great to work with such great guys, knowing that we've got a light at the end of the tunnel. It's good stuff.

CHRIS POOK: I would like to comment on Wally and the great job he's done with CART over the years. He was the first chief steward, one of the chief stewards, he's done an outstanding job over the years. I think we should recognize him for what he's done, the tremendous work he's done over the years. He was an outstanding official, continues to be an outstanding official. He's worked with Chris this year. We all owe him a great debt of thanks for the long hours and either he put in. That having been said, like all things in life, things change, things go on. I just want you to know I have absolute confidence in Chris Kneifel as our chief steward. He's going to take our officiating to a new level. As you heard just a few minutes ago, he has totally embraced this concept. If a guy has made a mistake, but he hasn't gained an advantage as a result of that mistake, why ruin his race for him just for the sake of hitting him? Don't do it. Let him race. He hasn't gained the advantage, let him get on with that. Chris embraced that. We want to enhance driver's careers, not get in the way of them. Thanks Wally, welcome Chris Kneifel. Thank you for what you're doing for us, Chris.

CHRIS POOK: The State Fair Board in Milwaukee did vote on approval for a night race, if we want to run one there. Obviously we're looking at it. I don't think we've made any bones about the fact that Cleveland, on the 4th of July weekend, we'd love to run a night race there. There's challenges to it. Chris Kneifel needs to look at both these racetracks, the lighting systems. We'll work with Musco Lighting, the number one event lighting company in the world. We'll work with them. Chris will take a look and have a discussion with them as to the standards of lighting. The television folks will look at it. We'll make a decision. Stay tuned. Thank you for the question.

JOHN LOPES: In terms of announcements, we hope you will be pleased to start hearing things possibly as soon as today, that's Adam's department, in terms of teams, sponsors, drivers moving forward in the future. I imagine we'll have several announcements over the next couple of weeks.

CHRIS POOK: I haven't heard that rumor. Thanks for giving us a heads-up on it. Let me just say to you that there is a fairly substantial demand for our racing, our type of racing, in various major cities in North America and in other parts of the world. We're looking at them on a case-by-case basis. We'll react accordingly. As I've said many times before, as long as it fits within the marketing plans of the companies who are involved in our series, both in the forms of sponsors on the side of race cars and sponsors of the series itself, we will adjust accordingly.

CHRIS POOK: First the all, the race is tomorrow, so it's hard to answer if it's the best race of the season when we haven't had it yet. I certainly compliment the design of the racetrack, everything they've done here. Has all the trappings, makings, to be an extremely good racetrack. I think qualifying so far has been exciting. It bodes well. Motor racing is a business of absolute unknowns from moment to moment, as some of our veteran reporters will tell you. We try to have a surprise for them every inch of the way. I'm sure it will be an excellent race tomorrow, though. Certainly the organizers deserve to have an excellent race for the effort they've put into it.

CHRIS POOK: Not at all. Just like other major league sports, drivers come and go, team comes and go. We're disappointed to lose the drivers, certainly the couple of drivers at the moment, certainly a couple of the teams. But if you look to our paddock this weekend, there's no shortage of teams, certainly no shortage of drivers. I can just tell you if some of these drivers that are in the paddock this weekend come to the series next year, the standard of driving will be raised yet gain in this series. We've got some guys out there that don't take any prisoners, who are very hungry and very young. A couple of them have just said, "Don't worry about my paycheck, just put me in the race car, I'll earn a paycheck. I'm capable, I'm good, I can win in this series. Just give me a chance, let me drive." When you have those sort of level drivers coming around, you look at them, it won't take long for the audience and public to embrace them, particularly when they're youngsters. You saw what Manning did, Darren Manning at Rockingham, people were saying, "Who is Darren Manning?" Europeans know very well who he is. Now the Americans know him. Here is this guy that had never driven on an oval before, came out, tough oval, finished ninth. If he hadn't had a problem in his last pit stop, he probably would have been fifth or sixth. I don't know if you saw Lotterer going this morning. Here is a 20-year-old, all he wants to do is take that car deep in the corner. If you watched him drive, he takes it in deep. There's a couple more hanging around that will give some of our veterans who are returning a real hard time next year.

CHRIS POOK: You guys are remarkably productive with your news. I have not finalized it yet. I will be on a trip, along with a couple of my guys, first week of December. We'll then decide exactly what we're going to do, where we're going to do it. This is a decision we're taking very seriously. We'll take what is best for the company. I don't know.

JOHN LOPES: With reduced horsepower next year, the cars are going to be slightly slower. The ability to regulate boost, we can go to ovals that we haven't been able to go to before. We can actually regulate the cars on a case-by-case basis. The simulations that Lee Dykstra and his staff have been running show the cars at pace speeds in the turns. We also believe we're going to get them side-by-side.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Traction control will be gone.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: I would think it would be much more in the drivers' hands, having the traction control gone, having the fuel mixture gone. These guys are going to have to go out there and race. I also really believe the quality of work that Lee has done in terms of the different wing packages have also given the guys the type of car that they can race. That's obviously what was shown at Fontana.

JOHN LOPES: I don't see that we would be going back to Texas Motor Speedway, not that we wouldn't talk to them, but we have had not discussions with them. We do plan on being back in Texas in the future, however. The rumor on Fontana is purely speculation. I can tell you the event we had there two weeks ago was perhaps the finest event we've ever had at Fontana. I believe that there's a renewed spirit of cooperation and relationship with our two companies. It actually was a very good event for us, not just on the competition side, behind the scenes with the people who work with our staff at CART. It was quite a pleasant experience. We would like to stay there.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: In terms of giving you straight-out numbers, I'd be making it up. It's obvious that it has a huge influence on a lot of things. Obviously, the cars are nowhere near as efficient as they might be under braking. That would be very noticeable to the drivers. Obviously, through the high-speed turns, they're not making the downforce the guys typically are used to. There's a slight adjustment there. But that's more seat of the pants. I think where you might also see some of the thin air playing, something as fundamental as tire pressure, how the tire, as it heats up, how the pressure in the tire builds. That's also affected by altitude. I would think some of the teams that have figured out how the tires are reacting in terms of how they're setting the pressure, make very minute adjustments that can give you a substantial performance advantage, if you have it figured out versus someone that might not have it figured out. The altitude definitely affects the cars on a number of fronts.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: I have watched the sun set every night and look at my watch. There's no question, when we saw the schedule, this time of year, there's no fluff in it, that's for sure. We have run the numbers. In a perfect world, if we run an all-green race, this race could be 1 hour, 45 minutes. That's probably a little optimistic. Barring any major drama, I don't think we're going to have any problem there with the light. I think sunset is 5:57 for Sunday. Obviously, visibility will be diminished prior to that. We'll keep our fingers crossed. Next year I'd like to see it start earlier.

CHRIS KNEIFEL: Since then, at Fontana, we published a rule book clarification. We're always looking at Plan A, B, C, D. It's really Mother Nature. Let's see what the weather is like when we wake up tomorrow. The thing that could get us upside down - no pun intended - is a lot of rain.

ADAM SAAL: You could worry yourself with "what ifs." We feel we have the right people on the job. We're going to end this season on a high note. We will speak with you later today in three more press conferences, and look forward to the race tomorrow. We'll see you back in Monterrey next year after our season opener in St. Petersburg. Thank you very much.