September 12 1999

Every year in the late summer/early fall CART teams, drivers, and fans alike always look forwards to the stop at the beautiful Laguna Seca Raceway located in the hills outside Monterey, California. This year was no different until tragedy struck in the Saturday morning practice session. From that point on, a dark gloomy sadness overwhelmed the remainder of the weekend. This was the 17th time CART ran at Laguna Seca plus countless practice weekends. Never before had a driver even suffered serious injury in a CART car at this track. The track was modified to meet FIA specifications between the 1988 and 1989 seasons. Since then there have been two major upgrades with safety improvements to the track as well. The accident can easily be called a freak accident, but it did happen and we all must learn from it and move on.

Approximately 40 minutes into the Saturday morning practice session Gonzalo Rodriguez went straight on at the entry to the world famous corkscrew at nearly double the normal turn in speed. He then skipped across the gravel trap, hit the wall and flew straight up into the air before landing upside down on the steep rocky hill behind the wall. Tragically, Gonzalo suffered head and neck injuries and was killed instantly. Telemetry indicates that he hit the wall at approximately 160mph. The turn in speed for turn 8 is approximately 90mph. The speed into the braking zone for turn 8 is around 170mph. I witnessed this horrific accident and saw smoke coming off of Gonzalo's tires all the way down the straight leading into the braking zone. It is unknown at this time what caused the accident, but it appeared to me that something went terribly wrong.

CART Safety Team and Laguna Seca Raceway workers started in on repairs to the circuit in the corkscrew area. The wall was pushed back almost a foot by the impact. In addition, a portion of the wall had to be temporarily removed to extricate the car. Once the wall was back in place workers gathered tires to make a three-deep tire wall in front of the original concrete wall with single tire wall. Meanwhile CART drivers held a meeting and decided that the remainder of practice and qualifying would be cancelled out of respect for Gonzalo. At the hour when qualifying was set to begin the starter put out a ceremonial green flag to begin the session but all remained quiet and no tires were turned. The Penske team withdrew their remaining driver, Al Unser Jr., and began to pack their transporters. The mood in the paddock was grim.

The starting grid was set using the provisional starting positions from Friday's qualifying session. Bryan Herta was on pole with a time of 68.334 seconds, 3 tenths ahead of second spot. The series points leader Juan Pablo Montoya was mired down at 16th spot after struggling and suffering from a shunt in turn 6. The best starting position for title contenders was Michael Andretti who started 5th.

Morning warm-ups went off without any serious incidents. The crowd was quieter than normal and the atmosphere was subdued due to the tragedy the day before. As the fog lifted anticipation of the race brought a more normal Laguna Seca weekend atmosphere, but there was still sadness in the air. The race began without any problems beyond the occasional wheel off or harmless spin. Bryan Herta took the lead and controlled the race the entire way. Tony Kanaan was able to stay close to Herta through lap 45 when he fell out due to shifter troubles. Bryan Herta's teammate Max Papis ran third. Dario Franchitti and Greg Moore touched and took each other out at lap 32. On the restart after the full course caution Michael Andretti and Jimmy Vasser touched causing the caution period to extend for further clean up.

Meanwhile, "super-sub" Roberto Moreno driving in place of the injured Christian Fittipaldi worked his way through the field from his 14th starting position and was running down Herta in second spot. Herta took the win with a 1.825 margin of victory over Roberto Moreno in second place. Max Papis finished third, the same position in which he qualified. Series points leader Juan Pablo Montoya managed to come home in 8th place and maintains his points lead over Dario Franchitti by 28 points. Paul Tracy finished 4th to move ahead of Michael Andretti into 3rd in series points.

Next race is round 18 (of 20) on September 26 on a street circuit in Houston, Texas.

Mike Veglia ([email protected])