Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford,

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 12:02:44 -0400

PR-HERDEZ-Mexico City Sunday
Oct 13, 2003 03:02 pm - Posted by Michael F. Hollander, Editor, RIS
SUNDAY NOTES & QUOTES – Gran Premio de Mexico
Dominguez Scores Fifth Podium of the Season
Bridgestone Presents the Champ Car World Series Powered by Ford,

Round 16 of 19
October 12, 2003
Round 17 of 19

Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, México City, México
Track: 2.786–mile/4.484-kilometer permanent road course
Ford-Cosworth/Lola/Bridgestone

Fresh from their historic 1-2 finish at Miami, the Herdez Competition team
traveled south to its spiritual home, Mexico City, for the Gran Premio de Mexico.
In front of a capacity crowd, estimated at over 211,000, Mexico City native Mario
Dominguez earned his fifth podium of the season with third place and while
teammate and countryman Roberto Gonzalez also came home in the points in tenth.
Paul Tracy led the field to the start but the cars behind were not properly
aligned so the first lap was run under yellow. When the green flag dropped on the
second lap, 20 cars screamed down the long front straight in front of the massive
and extraordinarily enthusiastic crowd.  The action started immediately as Vasser,
Jourdain, Fernandez and Manning made contact in turn one. Threading his way
through the area, Dominguez found himself in seventh place at the end of that lap.
Three laps later, he passed Carpentier to move into sixth where he stayed until
the first round of pit stops on lap 19. The #55 team, led by Crew Chief Daryl Fox,
made quick work of the first stop and sent Mario from the pits as soon as the tire
change was completed, vaulting him past Ryan Hunter-Reay and into fifth.

Dominguez maintained his position all the way through the second pit stop before a
strong pass down the inside of Junqueira through the first turn of lap 54 moved
him up to fourth going into the final pit stop of the day. Paul Tracy had led the
entire race distance to this point before giving up the lead for six laps to an
out-of-sequence Fernandez. His pit stop on lap 63 shifted Tracy, Bourdais, and
Dominguez into their final positions of 1-2-3 respectively.

Meanwhile, rookie Roberto Gonzalez had been soldiering through the field, steadily
improving his lap times and his track position. On lap 46, he and Darren Manning
came together and spun; while Manning waited for the Simple Green Safety Team to
bump start his Reynard, Gonzalez quickly found reverse gear and rejoined the fray.
A combination of steady on-track work, clean pit stops and late race attrition
earned him his best Champ Car finish to date, in the points in tenth place.
Mario Dominguez – Car 55

Grid Position: 11th Finish: 3rd Laps Completed: 70/70 Points: 14 Total Points: 115
Championship Position: 6th Fast Lap: 1:30.007, third fastest of the day First I
have to thank the people of Mexico for the support they’ve given me. It’s been
unbelievable. From the bottom of my heart and I thank them… I really don’t have
the words to describe the feeling.  There’s no better way for me to repay them for
their support than by bringing them this podium finish on home soil. It was crazy
– I’ve never felt anything like that in my whole life. I could hear the crowd
chanting while I was doing donuts on the front straight. It was really the best
feeling in my whole life.

I have to hand it to the Herdez Competition team – they gave me the best pit stops
imaginable. I really think they are the best team in the paddock right now. Also,
Brian Ma and the rest of the engineering team – they just kept working and working
until we got the setup just right. They are the heroes today!
Roberto Gonzalez - Car 4

Grid Position: 18th Finish: 10th Laps Completed: 70/70 Points: 3 Total Points: 3
Championship Position: 23rd It was an intense day – that is really the best word
for it. I’m very happy, very excited and very grateful to both the team and my
sponsors Herdez and Nextel. The team supported me all through the weekend – even
when we were struggling, they were behind me 100% and that’s the best situation a
driver can ask for. We started the race well and were in the fight right from the
start. I was battling with Rodolfo Lavin – I think we might have even touched – it
was just great. But the words of my engineers were in my head – “remain calm, run
a smart race and run to the finish”. So I was trying to do my best for every lap
but to be smart too. It was quite hard; the track was changing quite a lot all
during the race. On the third stint, I got a very good set of tires and was able
to run lap times even faster than I qualified. It was a great result for the
entire team today.
Fast Facts:

 The festivities in Mexico celebrating Dominguez’s podium and Gonzalez’s solid
finish continued late into the night. In an unprecedented move, city officials
closed down a section of Paseo de la Reforma, one of the main streets in downtown
Mexico City’s Zona Rosa, for Dominguez to perform demonstration laps around “The
Angel”, the Monumento a la Independencia – one of the city’s best known landmarks.
A crowd estimated at over 15,000 showed up to support their home-town hero.  o
Today’s third place finish moves Dominguez into sole possession of sixth place in
the Champ Car World Series drivers championship. He trails Canadian Patrick
Carpentier by 21 points.  o The Gran Premio de Mexico set a new race distance
record; the 70-lap race was run in 1 hour, 56 minutes, 51.396 seconds.  Dominguez
ranks third in overall laps completed so far this year;
1794 of a possible 1875, or 95.7%

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