Junqueira not upholding Ganassi tradition

Mike Harris

Thursday, Aug. 2, 2001 | 3:28 a.m.

Bruno Junqueira's CART resume has one glaring omission after a half-season - no wins.

His immediate predecessors on Chip Ganassi's team, Alex Zanardi and Juan Montoya, set a very high standard with rookie honors and championships.

But after the 11th race of the 2001 season, rookie Junqueira's results are considerably more modest.

The 24-year-old driver has one pole, two front-row starts and four top-10 finishes. He also finished fifth in the rival Indy Racing League's Indianapolis 500.

All but one of those top-10s have come, strangely enough, on oval tracks, a discipline new this year for a road racer Junqueira.

"I have always liked fast corners and, on an oval, the corners are all left-handers, but they're almost all fast," Junqueira said. "I think the team has done a very good job this year, especially teaching me about the ovals. It's a very good team."

It was a bit of a shock when Ganassi, whose team had won four of the previous five series championships, chose to start the season with two rookies after Montoya left for Formula One and Jimmy Vasser was fired.

Nicolas Minassian, a Frenchman who was second to Brazilian Junqueira in the Formula 3000 series last year in Europe, didn't even make it to the halfway point. He was replaced in June by Memo Gidley, who has quickly become the team's No. 1 driver.

Still, if anybody on Ganassi's team is disappointed in Junqueira, who is 19th in the season points, it's certainly not apparent.

"I would have to compare Bruno's first year at this point to the first year Alex had when he was with us," said Mike Hull, the team's general manager.

Zanardi, who went on to win two CART championships, had one pole and one top-10 finish - a fourth - in his first eight races. He won from the pole in his ninth start and finished strong, winding up third in the points.

Hull is hoping for a similar breakthrough from Junqueira.

"Bruno is very similar to Alex in his style and he's a naturally gifted driver," Hull said. "He's very good out of the car. He can tell the guys on the crew what the car is doing and he has a knack for what the car needs. It's hard to teach that."

Hull said the best drivers in CART are the ones who can start working with the car in Friday's practice and be able to help improve its performance right up to Sunday's race.

He said Juinqueira can do that now, but was raw when he arrived this season. He couldn't provide much information at first on oval tracks, Hull said.

"I'm learning a lot but I'm a little disappointed in the season, especially the road and street races," Junqueira said. "I think I should have more points in the championship, but we haven't had much good luck."

Asked if it worried him when Minassian was fired, Junqueira shrugged and said a driver is judged by his performance.

"I think the team is happy with what I have shown I can do," he said. "I have shown the potential to win the series - not this year, but in the near future. That's what the team is looking for."

Junqueira insists he hasn't set any goals, but does have some priorities for the second half of his rookie year.

"I think I can score points and get some good solid runs," he said. "Oh, yeah, and I want to win a race. This team is used to winning and we haven't won this year."

That's especially galling for Junqueira when he looks at the statistics and sees eight different winners in the 11 races. But he said are many very good drivers in the series,

"It used to be that two or three drivers in CART were slow," he said. "No longer."

Whenever things go right, a driver can win a pole or be in the top three. When things go wrong, it's anywhere from eight to 15th, he explained.

Right now, though, with a week off before the race at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, Junqueira will work out and play a little tennis to stay in shape and enjoy his new home in Indianapolis.

"The rest of the season is going to be intense," he said. "I'll be ready."