RACE: A good entertaining race where most of the action was probably in the middle of the pack away from the camera's eyes. Some nice passes and excitement right to the end with Moore running like a bat out of hell with tires that were on his car for over 100 laps.

TRACK: Although I loved the old rounded rectangle configuration because of its similarities with Indy and the connection between Miami and Indianapolis, the new track was definitely faster, safer, and racier.

ANDRETTI: I just got one thing to say about his new wife -- I'm rooting for Michael to end up in Victory Circle every race!

MOORE: CART must have felt left out with NASCAR grabbing all the headlines in changing rules on the fly to even out the field, so they figured they would force Moore to use manual jacks instead of the air ones. Seriously, a bad break for the fastest car on the track. Last year, Moore was the youngest winner, now he is the youngest pole sitter. Next, the youngest champion?

SWIFT: Okay, now that we know Swift owns Homestead no matter what configuration they use, let's see them finally win elsewhere.

GOODYEAR: First and fourth place, and would have gotten more out of de Ferran if his gamble paid off. I'd say they're back.

TRACY: The more things change...

NEVES: Baptism by fire, but that was one heck of a save during the race to avoid an even bigger wallop.

PENSKE: One race doesn't answer everything, but it sure looks like the PC27 has potential. Now, if they can only cure the gearbox reliability problem that has plagued them since testing the car...

PITS: Not a good day in the pits. In addition to Moore having his air jack problems, a crew member on JJ Lehto's team blew out his knee, and it appeared that a Zanardi crew member nearly got run over when he was trying to get Alex to stop to avoid a collision with Mark Blundell. I don't know why ABC did not show that again.

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND: Michael Andretti's crew chief telling Michael just before the last restart, "Drive fast."

QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND RUNNER-UP: Bob Varsha after viewing the Victory Circle doings, "In the background, Michael's new wife Leslie. They got married Christmas Eve. As he mentioned there's been a lot going on in his wife."

NEXT RACE: The Twin Ring Motegi course has a very similar configuration to Gateway where the radius of Turns 1 and 2 is different than the radius of Turns 3 and 4. The Japanese love their open wheel racing as witness to the lottery system to get Formula 1 tickets, the 17,000 fans who showed up just to watch a CART test day (probably more than showed up for an actual race that NASCAR put on), and browsing the magazine racks. No reason to believe the fans will be disappointed.

Deep Throttle

Copyright © 1998 by Deep Throttle. All Rights Reserved.