Grand Prix of St. Petersburg

Grand Prix race course gets raves

By BRANT JAMES
Published March 31, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - Sebastien Bourdais says it's the best street course he has ever seen.

Kirk Russell humbly agrees. And the Grand Prix of St. Petersburg director of track operations suggests that two years after he helped Championship Auto Racing Teams stage its race through downtown streets, the 1.8-mile course the Indy Racing League will use on Sunday, while identical in route, will be even better.

"I believe he's on the right foot," Russell said of Bourdais' assessment while standing near the pit road exit on Wednesday as crews laid tire barriers at the end of Turn 1. "Just the setting, the course layout itself, to being every bit as good as any road circuit, any temporary circuit in the world. When you see this thing all dressed out, it's going to be pretty spectacular."

Workmen made improvements to the course Wednesday before the 3.9-miles of 10,000-pound concrete blocks, double layers of fencing and the 12,000 clamps that hold it together are installed and the course enclosed.

Russell, a former vice president of competition and operations at CART (now Champ Car), said he was surprised how much St. Petersburg had changed when he was asked by promoter Barry Green to work on this event. The key elements, he said, that make the 14-turn course unique and challenging remain.

"The neat thing is I think a lot of places have compromised the competition to get a race - which is understandable," he said. "But here we have three very nice straights with good tight corners at the end, which is a good opportunity for braking, a challenging course. It has some wide open areas like you have on (Albert Whitted Airport). It has some tight areas like you have down around Bayfront Center and Pioneer Park and it lends itself to be a real old-fashioned-type street course with all the modern technology to protect the drivers and spectators."

Just two drivers who competed in the 2003 CART race in St. Petersburg will contest the IRL's first non-ovals event here: Chip Ganassi Racing's Darren Manning, who raced in 2003 for Walker, and Cheever Racing's Patrick Carpentier, formerly of Forsythe. They don't expect their institutional knowledge to last the weekend.

"Advantage?" Carpentier said, grinning. "Yeah, for about a half an hour."

But Carpentier might have more of an edge than he admits. He raced in the street and road course-heavy Champ Car series until joining the oval-dominated IRL this season. And Carpentier raced well here in 2003, starting fourth and running with the leaders before a crash relegated him to an eighth-place finish, three laps down.

"I passed Bourdais and then (eventual race winner) Paul Tracy passed me and we stopped in the pit and Paul went for a little bit less fuel and went straight back out," Carpentier remembered. "I put a little more fuel into it and I came back out and he had gained a little bit on me and tried to pass him back on cold tires trying to get back up to speed. I took the turn too hard and ended up in the wall in the back there."

Manning was running sixth through 75 of 105 laps when a gear problem put him out of the race, religating him to 13th overall. He said the intriguing part of the St. Petersburg course is its variety.

"All street circuits are tight and twisty and technical, but it's nice that St. Pete has a little bit of a road course section there, which is on the pit straights on the runway there," he said. "So that gives you some really good opportunities there because you have a slow corner onto a really wide open corner at the end of the long straight. That's a really good drafting opportunity and overtaking opportunity and there was lots of passing."

While Carpentier and Manning take their second run at St. Petersburg, Bourdais, the Champ Car champion, will be doing publicity work in advance of his series opener on April 10 on the streets of Long Beach, Calif. Currently living in Tampa, but set to move into a St. Petersburg home in early May, Bourdais still remembers the site of his Champ Car debut fondly.

He won the pole but flattened a tire brushing a wall on Lap 35 and finished 11th. Bourdais went on to be named series rookie of the year. He said Turns 1 through 4 will be the best places to pass.

"I made a couple of passes going into Turns 2 and 3, but 4 was challenging," he said. "Maybe there will be some on the back straight before the bay, but it is a lot harder there because you lose some momentum going through there."

A widened Turn 1 - at the end of a 2,413-foot straightaway coming off the airport - and Turn 2 should be hot spots. Pit road reconnects with the course at Turn 2. Drivers swinging wide to make a left-hand turn meet traffic exiting the pits. No crashes occurred there in 2003, but it was the design element drivers most criticized.

"It was controversial, true, but basically the out was faster than the race track," Bourdais said. "There were some comments ... all in all, everyone was pretty happy. (It's) pretty rare (when) you don't hear drivers complaining."

[Last modified March 31, 2005, 01:28:16]