Beautiful hot weather greeted the CART field in the 18th round of CART's 20-race season. Coming into this round four drivers remained alive in the points chase; Gil de Ferran, Kenny Brack, Helio Castroneves, and Michael Andretti. Unlike other recent years CART has raced at Laguna Seca, this race turned out to be a bizarre crash-filled event with eight full-course caution periods and the race length shorted to the rules mandated two-hour time limit. The old record for full-course caution periods for this event dating back to 1983 was four. In those years a driver has never won the event from further back than 4th starting position.

Starting from pole the defending 2000 season CART champion Gil de Ferran looked like the man to beat as he raced off into the lead followed by team-mate and 2000 Laguna Seca race winner Helio Castroneves. Michael Andretti's season championship hopes were ended on the first lap when he spun off in the (aptly named) Andretti hairpin (turn 2) on the first lap. The Simple Green CART Safety Team was quick to get Michael restarted without loosing a lap but he required several visits to pit lane to get his car sorted out resulting in falling a lap down. About this point in the race it seemed that the field was pushing really hard and many drivers making little, but costly errors.

As caution periods and pit stops played out the field was finally restarted with Adrian Fernandez in the lead, Max Papis in second, Memo Gidley in third, and the original top running order of de Ferran, Castroneves, and the Kiwi rookie phenomenon Scott Dixon rounding out the top 7. Fernandez ducked off into the pits handing the race lead to (Mad) Max Papis for good with Memo Gidley following closely for second. A final caution period came when Oriol Servia had a frightening shunt in the Andretti hairpin after touching wheels with Mauricio Gugelmin on lap 66. After a long period to extricate Orion from his car, which had vaulted and flipped some 25 feet up into the air, thankfully landing right side up, Servia gave the crowd a thumbs up from the stretcher to let the crowd know he was at least somewhat okay. Servia was taken to the local hospital for x-rays and released the following morning.

Nothing changed in the running order throughout the top six after the restart and the race was shortened from 83 laps down to 76 laps under the two-hour time limit rule. After starting all the way back in 24th Max Papis found himself taking the race win by only 0.794 seconds over Memo Gidley who also had an amazing day moving through the field from his 21st starting position. Mad Max summed it best with this quote; "I'm dedicating this win for my friend Alex and I have to thank my guys for helping me get here. When you start at the back you have to do something different," the emotional Papis said. "I gained some spots early in the race and got more by saving fuel. It's very difficult to drive hard when you have to keep looking at the fuel mileage target number, rather than going flat out." Max was sure to truly dedicate his win to Alex Zanardi by doing Zanardi's trademark race win doughnuts down in the Andretti hairpin.

CART moved on to Australia and California Speedway for the final two rounds with three drivers left in the points hunt. I will be at California Speedway and will cover the event for The Car Enthusiast to wrap up this tumultuous CART season.