De Ferran rewards patience of faithful

They came and they waited (how they waited), but eventually the 38,000 spectators who flocked into the Rockingham Motor Speedway yesterday got what they came for as reigning champion Gil de Ferran scythed by the 2001 series leader Kenny Brack on the last corner to win the first Cart race held in England.

It took three days to get the ChampCars racing round the dramatic new oval track near Corby, Northamptonshire, as weather delays took the event to the edge of jeopardy. Then the truncated race began with a bang. As Brack and de Ferran immediately began their long duel for the lead in front of a patient crowd visibly relieved to see any action, Max Papis spun and crossed the finish line backwards. Further back, Bruno Junqueira and Tora Takagi tangled. One lap into the scheduled 168 (cut down from the original 210 and subsequently cut further to 140 due to fading light) and the race cars were already going slowly under the yellow flags as debris was cleared away. Welcome to the on-off tension of American oval racing.

For agonising hours on Saturday morning the safety-conscious Cart officials had deliberated until finally they declared the track safe. After one practice session the grid was formed on the basis of championship points standings, just as it was in Germany last weekend. That made it good news for Team Rahal driver Brack and Penske Racing's de Ferran. Behind them, Michael Andretti and Helio Castroneves shared the second row, with local hero, the Scotsman Dario Franchitti, on the third row alongside New Zealander Scott Dixon.

But it was perhaps fitting that Tony Kanaan, 10th in the starting line-up, was fastest in practice with a speed of 215.3mph in his Mo Nunn Racing Reynard. This is the fastest lap on any British circuit, and small consolation for British-born Nunn in whose car Alex Zanardi had suffered the terrible accident at Germany's Lausitzring last week which led to both his legs being amputated.

The much-loved Zanardi, twice a ChampCar champion, is now conscious and talking to his wife Daniella, and his fellow racers carried the pineapple symbol from his helmet as their mark of respect for a fallen comrade.

These are difficult times for Cart, the more so after last week's events. But racers are resilient fellows. Papis, the 31-year-old Italian who hit the concrete retaining wall with a 105g impact at Michigan earlier this year after being taken off by team-mate Brack, spent time earlier this week with Zanardi. Then he steeled himself to carry on. A leading player on the two-and-a-half mile superspeedways, he also loves the short ovals. "You get a corner, and the chance to get it right, every five or six seconds. It's like getting Bridge corner at Silverstone, or the second Lesmo at Monza, absolutely right. There's no bigger thrill."

Running speeds approaching 240 mph for anything between 250 and 500 miles, in a 900bhp car weighing 700kg, with conventional gear sticks and no power-steering, requires sheer physical strength and stamina. Papis pulls back his shirt sleeve to reveal a forearm like Popeye's. "On an oval I know exactly what feeling I need to get through my arms," he says. "That feeling changes depending on what ride height you run the car at. And if it starts to slide, you don't try to correct it. I just ease my grip off the steering wheel, like you would if the car was aquaplaning, and let the aerodynamics sort it out. And you have to keep the power on to make the aerodynamics work.

This car is built to go fast," he says of his Team Rahal Reynard-Ford, "but below 200 mph it is like a snake!" All afternoon de Ferran and Brack proved the most adept snake charmers, trading the lead as they thrilled the crowd. On the penultimate lap Brack got a run on the Brazilian as he faltered while lapping Papis, but on the last corner the former British F3 champion rallied, slipped alongside the Swede and carved across his bows to regain the spoils.

"I thought we had it covered," Brack said glumly. "Obviously we didn't." It was an emotional victory for de Ferran, whose wife, Angela, is British.

"What happened with Alex is still very much on our minds, and we are trying to return to some sort of normality," he said after the race. "After my second pit stop my crew did a fabulous job and I thought I was OK until I tried to lap Papis and understeered wide and Kenny got a run on me.

"But then I got a good run on him out of turns two and three and I was able to carry the throttle a bit deeper into turn four. Thankfully, I made it by."

So after all the hiccups, the crowd got their race, and they loved it. Was it a success? Absolutely. Does Rockingham have some problems to address before 2002? You bet.