By Dick Mittman
indy500.com
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Slowly, the losing drivers in the 87th Indianapolis 500 made their way to the garages while Gil de Ferran and Marlboro Team Penske celebrated on the Victory Podium.
Sam Hornish Jr.'s oil-splattered car was towed through Gasoline Alley. A mechanic carried a rear wing off rookie Scott Dixon's car. Another car was deposited from a wrecker. Team owners and tire changers alike filtered out of the pits with the same thought: How do you beat Roger Penske at Indy?
"You don't ... today," said de Ferran's chief mechanic, Matt "Swen" Jonsson.
Driver Helio Castroneves didn't make race history by winning his third Indianapolis 500 in a row. It was his teammate, de Ferran, who snatched the feat away by the tiny difference of .2990 of a second. Castroneves settled for second.
That was the second time in the last three Indianapolis 500s that Marlboro Team Penske cars ran first and second at Indy.
And it was Penske who scored the trifecta. It also was the fifth consecutive Indianapolis 500 victory in which Penske cars have started. In addition, Penske picked up his 13th career victory at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
So how can this juggernaut team from Reading, Pa., be stopped?
"A better car," said team owner Mo Nunn, whose Japanese rookie, Tora Takagi, charged home fifth only 2 seconds behind.
"I mean, he's strong in every department, no weaknesses in the team. So we've just got to beat him a little sometimes in the pits. On the Toyota front (Nunn used the same engine), he builds his own engines, so I don't know if they have anything there."
Does the close defeat inspire the Mo Nunn Racing team to increase its effort to subdue their No. 1 rival?
"Oh, yes, oh, yes," Nunn said. "Every time. We're off testing Wednesday at Richmond. Now we've got to beat him for the championship."
John Menard has been trying to win Indy for 20 years. Rookie Vitor Meira came home 12th, a lap down, while primary driver Jaques Lazier fell out after 61 laps in 29th.
"I think you're going to have to just out-work him, but Roger's a hard worker," Menard said. "They're very deep and they're very thorough. And if anybody's going to beat them, that's how they're going to have to do it.
"Roger's my hero. He does it right."
Tony Renna is another rookie who gave a good chase and was in the hunt right to the end. Driving for Kelley Racing, he got his first opportunity at Indy to challenge the white-and-red cars of Penske.
"You've got to keep working at it, man," Renna said. "They are obviously a fantastic team.
"They've got tremendous resources, and they've got tremendous people. Roger, he runs a race team fantastically. Gil and Helio are fantastic drivers, and I'm extremely excited for Gil to win. He was one of my picks if it wasn't me. A great guy, and I am so happy for him."
Barry Green no longer owns the team that he sent to battle against Penske for so many years. But he's still a consultant for current Andretti Green Racing owners Michael Andretti, brother Kim Green and Kevin Savoree. He takes a different view of another Penske romp.
"You look at the record, and you can say, where was he a few years ago?" he said. "He was embarrassed about where he was going, so he's beatable just like everyone in this establishment.
"They did a good job. Not a good job, a fantastic job, and my congratulations go to both the drivers and the team. Today was their day, and they did it. They worked hard. They deserve it. They did a great job."
Kenny Brack, who won the 1999 Indianapolis 500 driving for A.J. Foyt, was signing autographs outside his Rahal/Letterman garage after the race. A broken gearbox slowed him five laps short of the finish in 16th.
"I don't know about that right now," Brack said when asked what it'll take to beat Penske. "He's seems pretty tough around here.
"They make no mistakes. They got all the good resources, good drivers and the whole package. We just have to beat them."
Penske chief mechanic Jonsson was beaming at the finish. He was on the losing side, with de Ferran, when Castroneves won the last two seasons at Indy.
"Fantastic," Jonsson said about his feelings. "I think it makes it even better that way. "I'm really glad Helio was chasing us this year coming in second. Fantastic for the team."
Jonsson probably knows quiet, methodical de Ferran as well as anyone. He said the Brazilian deserves his nickname of "The Professor."
"He's very, very particular about things," Jonsson said, "which makes us obviously have a pretty important job with having every little detail right.
"When he gets in the car, he likes to have everything right, every little small detail. It gets him off balance pretty easy. So we work hard getting every detail right."
For instance, the team even double-checks the radio volume to be certain it is at a loudness that de Ferran wants.
De Ferran, 35, came back from a concussion suffered at the end of the 2002 IRL IndyCarTM Series season to lead in the season opener at Homestead-Miami Speedway, then was involved in a crash at Phoenix. He suffered a back fracture and another concussion and missed the Indy Japan 300 in April. At Indy, de Ferran switched to the Panoz G Force chassis while Castroneves stayed in the Dallara.
"The guys put it together the right way, it held up 500 miles, and Gil kept his nose clean," Jonsson said.
Castroneves, undaunted by his close defeat, waved to the crowd as he walked up the pits to congratulate his teammate.
"He's a very technical driver and that's what I learned most from him," Castroneves said of de Ferran. "I guess experience at this place means more than anything else. And he's just proving, even though sometimes people think he's old, he's not old. He's still very fast. And again, it's like wine, getting older, getting better."
Then Castroneves threw in his closing jesting zinger.
"I just hope he slows down now, and he retires like Michael (Andretti)."
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