Vasser sitting on top

Monday, Sept. 9, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

MONTEREY, Calif. -- He may be Las Vegas' best-kept secret, but Jimmy Vasser also is the city's newest champion.

Vasser, who last spring moved into a new home on Canyon Gate golf course, picked up a nifty house-warming gift for himself at Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Monterey, rolling to a sure and steady fourth-place finish to clinch his first PPG IndyCar World Series championship at the picturesque Laguna Seca road circuit.

"It feels great," said Vasser, who finished the 16-race championship with 154 points, 22 more than Michael Andretti and Alex Zanardi, Vasser's Target Chip Ganassi Racing teammate who won Sunday's race with a spectacular last-lap pass of Bryan Herta. "This is the goal you set out to achieve at the beginning of the season."

The championship came in Vasser's third full season on the IndyCar trail and fifth overall.

"We've been out front basically all season long," he said. "We had our race wins early and had some thin times in the middle but we were just able to stay consistent all year. That's what it takes to win championships."

The 30-year-old driver, who grew up in Morgan Hill, Calif., about an hour's drive from Laguna Seca, took the series points lead with a victory from the pole position at Surfers Paradise in Australia March 30, one of his four 1996 victories. He finished every race and led all drivers in laps and miles completed.

But at one point in mid-August, Vasser's lead over Al Unser Jr. had shrunk to a single point. Vasser began the weekend still facing mathematical challenges from second-generation superstars Andretti (14 points behind) and Unser (17 back).

Andretti, who won a season-high five races to mount a late-season charge, couldn't find a competitive setup for the weekend and struggled to come home ninth on Sunday. Unser was even less competitive, slogging to a 16th-place finish, meaning Vasser only had to keep all four wheels of his Firestone-shod Reynard-Honda turning to clinch the crown.

And when it came to that, Vasser, who finished out of the points (1-12) just once all year, was the master.

"It's been my philosophy all year to take care of my race car," said Vasser, who as series champion will take home $1 million from the PPG point fund. "I've been here for five years now and I've seen that the guy with the most consistent car, the one that finishes the most races, is the one that wins the championship.

"That's basically been my goal all season long -- maybe not to be as aggressive as you can be to win one corner, but to take care of your race car ... and make sure it gets to the end. And that was the philosophy today -- even more so. I was being real ginger with the car the first half of the race."

Vasser's heady season-long performance also provided car owner Ganassi with his first championship. The two joined forces last season, when Vasser finished eighth in points with a pair of seconds.

"I guess you'd have to say it's the biggest day in the team's (history)," said the 38-year-old Ganassi, a journeyman Indy-car driver in the 1980s who formed his own team in 1990.

"I've been talking all season long about my team and about my drivers, but I guess today they showed what it's all about."

A full-course yellow flag following the final series of pit stops enabled Vasser, who was running a distant third, to pull up right behind Herta and Zanardi, who easily were the class of the field. Vasser had hoped to make it a three-car race but fell back with a blistered tire during the closing laps and eventually was passed by Crystal Bay's Scott Pruett.

But the real drama didn't transpire until the final lap. Zanardi, who had been relentlessly pursuing Herta, made a banzai move at the corkscrew, the famous series of downhill turns on the backside of the 2.238-mile circuit.

Zanardi dove inside of Herta, vaulted over a curb, and got all the way off the track. But he managed to keep control and bounced back on the pavement ahead of Herta, who had led from lap 43 to 82 in pursuit of his first career victory.

"I have to give credit to Bryan -- today he was a tough guy to beat," said a gracious -- and fortunate -- Zanardi, who won three races in 1996 and easily led the most laps (610) of any driver. "But I saw on the last lap that he was driving a little bit carefully, and I thought I might be able to surprise him.

"It was risky, but it worked."

Herta admitted getting a slow run entering the corkscrew and being surprised by Zanardi's aggressive move.

Asked during the postrace conference if he had ever been passed like that, a dejected Herta replied: "No. Nobody has."