MOTOR RACING ROUNDUP : Michael Andretti Is Finally a Winner in Cleveland

A race that had always been a problem for Michael Andretti was solved Sunday as the second-generation Indy car star outran Emerson Fittipaldi to win the Cleveland Grand Prix.

“We finally broke the ice here,” Andretti said after winning his second consecutive race and the 17th of his career. “We’ve lost momentum here in the past, so it’s nice to finally win this race. The last few years it’s been a problem.”

Andretti finished third as a rookie in 1984 and second in 1986, and he won the pole position in 1989. But that was the extent of his good fortune at Burke Lakefront Airport until Sunday.

In 1989, he led early only to fall far off the pace after an incident in the pits with his father and teammate, Mario Andretti.

A year ago, Michael moved from third to first on the first turn but had an electronics failure two turns later.

“I was kind of waiting for something to happen for a while, and it almost did,” he said.

The track, layed out on the concrete runways and taxiways of the small downtown airport, with some patches of asphalt, began to break up early in the 85-lap event.

On lap 57, just four laps after passing Fittipaldi for the lead, Michael got into the “marbles”--pieces of broken concrete and small balls of asphalt--in turn eight and nearly slid into a concrete barrier that later claimed the car of cousin John Andretti.

“I thought, ‘This is it!’ ” Michael said. “I just had no control. I was just hoping that the aerodynamics of the car would keep it down. Have you ever been on an ice patch? That’s what it was like. Then, going into the next turn, I had all that stuff still sticking to my tires. I got lucky.”

There was no luck involved, however, when he passed Fittipaldi for the lead.

Andretti, who picked up his third victory of the season, made a heart-thumping move between Fittipaldi and Rick Mears two weeks ago at Portland, Ore. He got away with it and swept away to the victory.

This time, it took Andretti until the 53rd lap on the 2.37-mile, 10-turn temporary road circuit to get to the front for good.

He trailed Fittipaldi’s Penske-Chevrolet most of the race, leading only one lap, during the first round of scheduled pit stops. But Andretti moved to the front in the first turn on lap 53.

Fittipaldi, trying for his third Cleveland win, immediately slipped to the inside and retook the lead, moving just ahead of Andretti’s Lola-Chevrolet. But Michael darted to the inside on turn three, outbraked Fittipaldi and moved in front for good.

He held off Fittipaldi by 2.25 seconds despite two full-course caution flags in the final 18 laps that bunched the leaders.

The green flag came out for the final time just three laps from the end, but Andretti easily held the top spot, with Fittipaldi more occupied trying to keep third-place Bobby Rahal, the series point leader, behind him.

Rahal wound up just ahead of defending series champion Al Unser Jr., who barely held off Arie Luyendyk for fourth. Mario Andretti wound up sixth, the last competitor on the lead lap.

The victory moved Michael Andretti into second place in the standings after eight of 17 races, trailing Rahal, 104-94. The battle for third got tighter, with Luyendyk at 79 points, Unser 78, Fittipaldi 77 and Rick Mears, who went out early after tagging a wall, 76.

John Andretti was running off the pace when he slid broadside into the concrete barrier. He was not injured but brought out the last caution flag on lap 79.

The other yellow came out on lap 68 after CART officials determined that the track was breaking up badly in several spots and took time to clean the surface in the interest of driver safety.

Nigel Mansell of Britain outdueled Alain Prost of France over 72 laps to win the French Grand Prix, his first Formula One victory of the year.

Mansell’s Williams-Renault finished five seconds ahead of Prost’s Ferrari at the finish at Magny Cours. They were separated by only a few seconds throughout the 192-mile race.

Ayrton Senna of Brazil was third in a McLaren-Honda. Senna, the defending world champion, won the first four races of the season and still leads in the driver standings with 48 points.

Mansell hadn’t won since the Portuguese Grand Prix last September. He was leading the Canadian Grand Prix last month but his car broke down on the last lap.

“Now we got this one out of the way and I hope we can keep going,” Mansell said.

Mansell and Prost were first or second the entire way. The largest margin was 16 seconds for Mansell after a Prost pit stop on lap 28. That disappeared when Mansell went in for new tires three laps later.

Mansell was just 4.3 seconds behind when he came out. He caught Prost on the 55th lap and quickly built a small margin when he lapped his Williams-Renault teammate Riccardo Patrese.

Then the deficit jumpied from .72 to 2.9 seconds in a lap.

“I had some big problems,” said Prost, who encountered traffic congestion.

So did Mansell.

“When I got close I got cut off,” Mansell said. “But it all worked out in the end.”

Both were comfortably ahead of Senna, who held off France’s Jean Alesi for third place.

Patrese came in fifth, with Andrea de Cesaris sixth.

Mansell’s win moved him into second in the standings with 23 points, two ahead of Patrese. Prost, the three-time world champion, is fourth with 17 points.

Tom McEwen, 53, earned his first NHRA top-fuel victory by defeating Lori Johns in the final of the Mopar Summernationals at Englishtown, N.J.

McEwen is a veteran of the funny-car class who came out of retirement this year to drive in top fuel for team owner Jack Clark of the Boston Red Sox. He won four funny-car events, the last in 1986. McEwen also competed in top fuel from 1963 to 1972.

McEwen’s victory was assured when Johns lost traction halfway down the quarter-mile track. He crossed the finish line with a time of 5.004 seconds at 283.55 m.p.h. Johns, of Corpus Christi, Tex., struggled with a time of 12.591 at 77.66. Despite losing to Johns in the semifinals, Don Prudhomme of Granada Hills held onto his lead in the Winston top-fuel standings.

In funny car, 21-year-old Del Worsham of Orange earned his second victory of the season.

Darrell Alderman of Lexington, Ky., rolled to his sixth victory of 1991 in pro stock. McEwen and Worsham collected $40,000 each, Alderman $25,000.