Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Castroneves to make a run at CART title

Friday, June 1, 2001 | 10:01 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand's motor sports notebook appears Friday. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

Helio Castroneves didn't have much time to celebrate his victory in Sunday's Indianapolis 500.

In the three days following his win in his first trip to the Brickyard, the 26-year-old Brazilian made the rounds of the New York television studios to do interviews, visited the New York Stock Exchange, met with Donald Trump and threw out the first pitch at a Mets game.

Less than five days after the biggest victory of his career, Castroneves now must shift gears and return his focus to the Championship Auto Racing Teams series, where he is locked in a tight battle for the championship after four races. Castroneves is second in the championship but only two points behind series leader Kenny Brack going into Sunday's Miller Lite 225 at The Milwaukee Mile.

"It has been a fantastic week, of course, but it's getting closer to another race so we have to focus already and keep doing our work," he said. "I have no trouble (refocusing on Sunday's race). In fact, I already spoke with all the engineers.

"It's a great situation; it's a great feeling. Of course, it's a great race in the world but, hey, we just have to keep continuing our job. And I'm really focused to this next one, especially that after Japan, finishing second and figuring out a little bit about ovals."

Although he led a charge of six CART teams taking the top six spots at the Indy 500, Castroneves refused to be lured into the CART vs. IRL debate.

"I don't think we should put it that way -- in terms of CART, IRL, NASCAR or Formula One," Castroneves said. "On that track (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) -- it's that track ... everybody is an Indy 500 driver. That's the way I consider it there, so nobody is there to be better than any other series. Everybody is trying to achieve one thing, which is win the race.

"For me, I race in Phoenix with the (IRL) guys, and I race with these guys, most of them, in Indy Lights so I have no problem with them and I have respect for most of these drivers. Again, Indy 500 is just a special race, and that's what makes this track and this race special, because all the drivers are together. It's not to make it different between drivers.

"Bottom line is, there it's Indy 500 drivers and I'm glad to be the champ."

"We have had a really good season so far," Busch said. "When you are a rookie there are a lot of things that you need to adjust to and learn and any way you look at it, it just takes some time to adjust. Now that we are about halfway through the season, I have raced at a lot of tracks that I had not been to before (and) some of my experiences have been good while others have been a bit challenging.

"All in all, it feels good to have some solid experience at tracks like Talladega, Bristol and Charlotte under my belt."

Busch is 20th in the Winston Cup standings and second in the Rookie of the Year race and has posted eight top-20 finishes -- including five in a row.

"The team and I have come a long way together," he said. "The crew and I are working really well together and have delivered a string of consistent finishes. Now we need to focus on qualifying better so that we don't have to start in the back and work our way up to the front; imagine what we could do if we could start up front."

Once CART and SMI settle their differences over the canceled race, it is believed that Las Vegas Motor Speedway general manager Chris Powell will resume negotiations with Heitzler to bring a CART race to the 1.5-mile superspeedway.

Powell said he is in the process of setting the speedway's 2002 schedule and would like to have an open-wheel race on that schedule. "But only if it makes good business sense for Las Vegas Motor Speedway," Powell said. "We're not going to have an open-wheel race -- either IRL or CART -- just for the sake of having a race." ...

A.J. Foyt has hired Donnie Beechler to drive a second Foyt/Harrah's Racing entry in the June 9 Casino Magic 500 at Texas Motor Speedway. Beechler will be teamed with Eliseo Salazar, who is second in the IRL points standings. ...

Greg Ray turned a lap of 164 mph under the lights at Richmond International Raceway to lead private IRL testing on Wednesday. Mark Dismore recorded a lap of 163.636 mph earlier in the day. The IRL visits the three-quarter-mile oval on June 30.

Force, the 10-time NHRA Winston Funny Car champion, saw his reaction time dip from under .5 seconds to .515 and resorted to practicing his starts on a simulated "Christmas Tree." As it turned out, all Force needed was a different visor on his helmet.

Since abandoning a darkly tinted visor two races ago in favor of a yellow one, Force has lowered his reaction time to an average of .490 seconds on his past eight runs.

"We went to the dark visor because of the glare you get on the tree when the sun's really bright," Force said. "But after I talked to (crew chief) Austin Coil about my leave times and what was different, we decided to go back to the yellow visor."

The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway will host an open Test 'n' Tune and competition in High School and Import Eliminators tonight beginning at 6 p.m.