Mears Wins Battle of Indy Lights

FONTANA —  It ended on yellow, but if Saturday’s PPG-Firestone Indy Lights race was a preview of today’s Marlboro 500 at the California Speedway, CART Indy car fans are in for a treat.

Bakersfield driver Clint Mears, son of former CART and Indianapolis 500 champion Rick Mears, won it, but it could easily have been any of half a dozen drivers turning in at victory lane.

Cars ran three, sometimes four, abreast and multiple lead changes were the order of the day on every lap run under the green flag.

“You had to be really aggressive and not be scared,” said Mears of the developing drivers, most of whom had limited, if any, experience drafting on a superspeedway.

Perhaps surprisingly, there were only two spectacular crashes, one on the second lap of the 50-lap race, involving Bob Dorricott Jr. of San Mateo and Frederic Gosparini of France, and another five laps from the end, involving Canadian David Empiringham, last year’s champion; Casey Mears, Clint’s cousin and teammate from Bakersfield, and Brian Cunningham of Lexington, Ky. Dorricott and Empiringham visited Loma Linda University Medical Center but neither suffered serious injury.

Had it not been for the late accident, Empiringham or Cunningham might well have won. They, Clint Mears and Canadian Lee Bentham were among the drivers passing the lead around. Mears had just moved back ahead when Empiringham and Cunningham tangled and went the rest of the way under yellow, finishing ahead of Chris Simmons of Indianapolis and Bentham.

Brazilian Tony Kanaan finished ninth and beat out countryman-teammate Helio Castro-Neves for the series championship, 156 points to 152.

Newly crowned CART champion Alex Zanardi, out of today’s race after crashing twice in practice Friday, said Saturday he was fine, with some reservations.

“I don’t feel that bad but I don’t feel right,” he said. “If I turn my head fast, I have a very bad headache. My head is not right. The gray stuff in my head, if I have any, is badly shook.”

The Newman-Haas CART team will remain intact for 1998. Michael Andretti, who has won 26 races for the team, and Brazil’s Christian Fittipaldi will again drive Ford-Cosworth powered Swift cars, according to co-owner Carl Haas.

Andretti won the season-opener at Homestead, Fla., in March but the team has been shut out since. Fittipaldi sat out seven races after breaking a leg in a crash at Surfers Paradise, Australia, in the second race.

“I know Michael will continue to score wins and it’s only a matter of time until Christian wins his first race,” Haas said. “If he didn’t have the accident, I believe he would have already won one or more races this season.”

Tony Bettenhausen, owner of the Reynard-Mercedes crashed in practice Friday by Patrick Carpentier, decided Saturday not to run the team’s backup car with a substitute driver.

“We explored all of our options and decided that it would be in the best interest of everyone if we withdrew the car,” Bettenhausen said.

Carpentier, leader in the race for rookie of the year, was knocked unconscious in the accident and was taken to Loma Linda University Medical Center for X-rays, then had a CT scan after complaining of neck pains. He was expected to be released Saturday night.