Sluggish day for Team Player's drivers Tracy and Carpentier at German 500 qualifying sessions source: teamplayers.ca Qualifying
for Sunday's German 500 in the Champ Car World Series turned out to be a drag
- or more precisely produced too much drag - for Team Player's drivers
Paul Tracy and Patrick Carpentier on Saturday. Hampered by an aerodynamics
configuration that produced an excess of downforce and consequently too much
drag, the Team Player's drivers qualified 15th and 16th
respectively for the 154-lap race on the 2.023-mile EuroSpeedway. "Paul and I will work together as a team to try to work our way up
the field during the race," said Carpentier. "Combining our efforts
is the best way for us to be competitive when you're starting in the back part
of the grid." The front row of that grid belongs to teammates Sebastien Bourdais, the
French rookie who won in Brands Hatch, England, last Monday, and Brazil's
Bruno Junqueira, Tracy's closest pursuer in the drivers' standings, which
Tracy currently leads by 11 points. Canadian Alex Tagliani has the ninth spot on
the grid. Because of the short turnaround time between races in England and
Germany, Champ Car regulations required teams to run with the same aerodynamics
package on the Brands Hatch road course and the superspeedway in Lausitz. "Team Player's opted for the bigger wings for this two-week European swing, but on this track it turns out that it produces too much drag with the downforce that we're running, and that's what caused our slower times," explained Carpentier. "We tested this aerodynamics package at Homestead (Florida) prior to this trip, but the temperature when we tested was hotter than it was here today, and that produced more downforce. Now we have too much drag in traffic, and it makes the car like a parachute."
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