Unser views LV race as springboard to Indy 500

Wednesday, April 19, 2000 | 9:50 a.m.

Al Unser Jr. cannot stress enough how important it would be to win Saturday's Indy Racing Northern Light Series Vegas Indy 300 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

And it has nothing to do with his impending move to the Las Vegas Valley.

Unser, whose family name is synonymous with the Indianapolis 500, readily admits he has an ulterior motive for wanting to do well on the 1.5-mile superspeedway this weekend.

"This race is very, very critical in my mind," said Unser, a two-time winner of the Indy 500. "What makes it critical to me is that it's the race right before the Indy 500. If you can win that race right before the Indy 500, you carry a lot of momentum with you.

"I think that's probably one of the reasons why I won so many Long Beach Grand Prixs, was because it was the race right before the Indy 500 so I really, really started working on that race so that we, as a team, could carry a bunch of momentum into the month of May."

Unser, who won the Indy 500 in 1992 and 1994 while driving for the rival CART series, won in Long Beach six times during his 17-year CART career, including the 1994 race prior to his second Indy 500 victory.

While each CART and Indy Racing event in which Unser has driven pays the same points to win, there is something special about the Indianapolis 500 that sets it above every other race -- particularly among the Unser clan.

Unser has won the race twice. His father, Al, won it four times and Junior's uncle, Bobby, conquered the Brickyard three times.

The last time Unser visited the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, however, he failed to qualify for the race despite the fact that he was the defending champion. That, Unser, said, only gives him more motivation to do well both this weekend and next month at Indy.

"I drive race cars so I can do well at Indianapolis on Memorial weekend," Unser said. "With myself not being there the last few years, it's really important to me to go there and do well.

"This year is a little bit more (important) because we haven't been there in so long and we left with missing the show (in 1995) ... so I definitely have some unsettled business at Indianapolis. The Las Vegas race is right before the Indy 500 so we need to do well here."

At each of the first three stops on the Indy Racing schedule this year, including this weekend's Vegas Indy 300, Unser has done extensive advance publicity. It is his way, he said, of trying to alleviate the confusion some race fans may have in the wake of the CART-IRL split.

"The one thing that single-seat open-wheel racing is suffering from right now is confusion," said Unser, who racked up 31 victories and two series championships before jumping to the IRL this season. "When the guy is surfing the (television) channels on Sunday and he comes on a race, he's looking for the Unser name, the Andretti name ... and in the last few years, he hasn't been finding them -- especially on Memorial Sunday at the Indy 500.

"That's what America, in my opinion, sees as single-seat open-wheel racing: What appears at the Indy 500 on Memorial Sunday. Without Indy, the Unser name wouldn't be known. Without Indy, the Foyt name would not be known. It's something that I want to do, to go out and tell the people that these cars are competitive, they're fast and they're the ones that race at the Indy 500.

"(CART team owner) Chip Ganassi has won the CART championship the last four years in a row and he's coming to Indianapolis -- and there's a reason why. The reason why is what I just said: People in America identify single-seat open-wheel racing ... with Indy."

Although Unser and his Galles ECR Racing team tested at Las Vegas Motor Speedway last week in preparation for Saturday's race, the 38-year-old Unser said he does not know what to expect when the green flag drops Saturday afternoon.

"It's really tough to tell without actually getting out there and racing, so each day is going to be a new day for me here," he said. "I'm just going to try to do some of the more traditional things that I have done in the past to go out and try to win the race.

"That's why it was very important for us to come here and test the week right before the race; it's too important to have the momentum going into Indianapolis, so that's what we're really working hard to do."