CART leader De Ferran wins Houston pole

Mike Harris

Saturday, Sept. 30, 2000 | 2:56 a.m.

HOUSTON - Gil de Ferran won the pole for the Houston Grand Prix, adding one precious point to his tenuous lead in the closest championship race in CART history.

However, with three races remaining, the Brazilian driver was a long way from celebrating on Saturday.

"I still feel this thing is very much up for grabs, with at least seven or eight guys still in it," de Ferran said.

He recalled a conversation he had with runner-up Dario Franchitti earlier in the day.

"Dario told me he was 29 points behind (Juan Montoya) coming into this race last year and came out of Australia (the next race) leading by nine," de Ferran said.

Montoya then caught Franchitti in the season-finale and won the championship on a tiebreaker, with seven victories to Franchitti's three.

The Team Penske driver gave himself a boost, coming up big in qualifying for Sunday's race. He turned a lap of 93.558 mph to put himself on top of the speed chart.

That lap came on the first of his two sets of qualifying tires, with 22 minutes left in the half-hour session.

"It was pretty exciting," he said. "I managed to get one clear run of two laps on the first set and I was able to put one in the bank. I lost the best of the second set of tires in traffic. Then it was just a matter of waiting.

"Everybody was getting close, so there were some very tense moments."

Franchitti had to sit out an eight-minute penalty at the end of the session after causing a red-flag in Friday's qualifying. He also got his fast lap early, turning a 93.421. The two front-row laps were separated by 0.106-seconds, and Franchitti's time was only 0.003 quicker than that of fourth-place Helio Castroneves.

The first 17 of the 25 drivers who made qualifying laps on the tight 1.527-mile, 10-turn temporary street circuit in downtown Houston were within one second.

Jimmy Vasser was third with a lap of 93.420, followed by Castroneves, de Ferran's Penske teammate, at 93.417, Michael Andretti at 93.317 and Montoya at 93.235.

Roberto Moreno, who is second in the standings, qualified at 14th at 92.209. He trails de Ferran by nine points, with Andretti another two behind and Paul Tracy, who was ninth at 92.822, fourth, 15 points behind the leader.

Others still in the running for the championship, with 66 points remaining, include Adrian Fernandez, who qualified 16th and clipped a tire barrier; Kenny Brack, 13th; Castroneves; Montoya; Cristiano da Matta, 12th; Vasser; Franchitti; and Patrick Carpentier, 19th.

The race winner earns 20 points, with one point for leading the most laps.

With such a battle for the $1 million Vanderbilt Cup, all the drivers know they need to score points - finish in the top 12 in the race - without making any costly mistakes.

"You have to race hard," de Ferran said. "You can certainly overcomplicate all the strategy. The simplest thing is to race normal."

Vasser, the 1996 champion, would love to be a spoiler the rest of the way.

He kept himself at least at the edges of the title picture Saturday by coming back with a strong showing in his backup car after crashing his primary one early during qualifying.

"The left front locked up," Vasser said. "I thought I would make it around the corner. I was wrong. Then I thought about parking it, but I decided to drive it back. It was real jerky and hard to drive and it took me a couple of minutes to get back around.

"But the guys had the car ready. It was on the pit lane waiting for me and all I had to do was drive it."