Champ Car era ends on positive turn

by JORGE A. MONDACA, FOXSports.com

Updated: April 20, 2008, 11:01 PM EST 6 comments

Following Danica Patrick's history-making IndyCar Series victory at Twin Ring Motegi, where she became the first female to win a major open-wheel race in history in her 50th career start, two of the top finishers in Sunday's Champ Car Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach— Will Power and Mario Dominguez — contributed stories of their own that will help the sport as it looks to reestablish its fan base, which at one time was bigger than even NASCAR stock car racing.

Power, who led 81 of 83 laps in a dominant performance, did his part by winning the final Champ Car race in history for two of the most polarizing men in the sport: Champ Car co-owner Kevin Kalkhoven and Frank Gore.

With the victory, Power put the focus back on the good things these men contributed to the sport in recent years instead of being blamed for keeping the sport apart (Kalkhoven) or for being the bad guy in a sponsor quarrel with one of the long-time owners in open-wheel racing (Gore).

"I'm just so happy for Kevin Kalkhoven, Aussie Vineyards, Craig Gore and all the guys that made this possible for me," said Power. "When you consider all the work they've done over the last couple of months with the merger, these guys haven't been home, haven't been seeing their families, and they've been working late nights, midnights, getting up at 5 a.m. What better way to pay them back than with a win?

"To give these guys the last win here at Long Beach, you know, is a real feather in their cap."

Kalkhoven accepted the opportunity as the winning owner to focus on the future, rather than dwell on the historic past of his series or the ugly American open-wheel war.

"This is really only the start," said Kalkhoven. "We have a lot of work to do in the schedule, we have a lot of work to do in the car, we have a lot of work to do in publicizing the great young drivers.

"Having (St. Petersburg winner) Graham Rahal, who did a wonderful job, Will (Power) who's been fantastic here, Danica winning yesterday … these are all the new names to the motor racing fraternity. But they're names that are going to be around for a long time and they're names that I think will help build the credibility of open-wheel sport for a long time to come."

Along with the redemption provided by Power's victory for Kalkhoven and Co., the other endearing story of the weekend was Dominguez's third-place result, the first podium finish for the small Pacific Coast Motorsports operation.

PCM, which began competing in Champ Car last season, looked to be one of the casualties when unification took place as team co-owner Tom Figge decided it was not an investment he wanted to make. But due to the sacrifices of Tyler Tadevic, who put everything he owned "in hock," the team was able to stay together for at least this weekend, including drivers Alex Figge and Dominguez.

"(I) came here this weekend hoping we could have a good result — sponsorship and other things depended on it," said Tadevic. "So for us to have a result like this ... I couldn't ask for more."

En route to their improbable podium finish, Dominguez was paired with a new race engineer, Gerald Tyler. Even though they had never worked together prior to the weekend, they established good communication and it was Tyler who served as a guiding voice throughout the race as Dominguez charged from his 10th-place start to take over third position from Alex Tagliani with seven laps remaining.

"What made me the happiest was to see the happiness of all the team member's faces," said Dominguez. "That's what made my day today, more than getting the podium finish for myself. We trusted in each other, we worked briefly last year and found to have great chemistry … this was just meant to be. Hopefully I can continue working with them in the future and that the results are going to grow and that it will only get better for everybody.

"Working with Gerald was great. I had never met him before but I sure knew who he was. We clicked right away. We started to know what each of us liked. I think the future is very bright. If we can keep working together, we are going to do great things together."

If the newly unified IndyCar Series continues having weekends like this one, the potential is there for many great things in the future.

Odds and ends

Girl Power, Part II: Mere hours after Danica Patrick recorded her victory in Japan, the open-wheel world got to celebrate another female winner as Simona De Silvestro claimed the checkered flag in the Atlantics Championship season opener.

The 23-year old Swiss driver took advantage of a problem with polesitter Jonathan Bomarito's machine and assumed the lead with 14 laps remaining. She kept the point position with relative ease and won the event by a margin of 1.285 seconds.

"It's awesome," said De Silvestro. "It's an awesome weekend because Danica won and I won. It's perfect!"

Father-son moment: Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach had the makings of being another special weekend for the Rahal family, as father Bobby was the grand marshal for the event and son Graham was starting from ninth-place —the same spot from which he propelled to the checkered flag in the IndyCar Series event in St. Petersburg, Fla., two weeks ago.

Unfortunately for the renowned open-wheel clan, a victory was not to be for Graham after he spun out on Lap 47 after making contact with Franck Montagny in Turn 10, dropping from fourth to 12th place.

Still, the Newman/Haas/Lanigan driver rebounded and was set to finish seventh, but a last lap crash into the tire barrier in Turn 9 relegated him to a 13th-place result.

"It's a shame to end the race the way we did because we had a good car," said Rahal. "We worked so hard to catch up after contact with Montagny that you just feel like an idiot for all the hard work to be wasted."