Zsolt Baumgartner out for weekend

On Friday in his first time ever in a Champ Car former F1 driver Zsolt Baumgartner from Hungary wiped out the only Champ Car the Minardi Team USA had available to it and will have to sit out the rest of the weekend.

“As you can imagine, I’m a bit upset with myself. I had been getting on well with the car during the morning, and was enjoying driving it, but then I made a mistake on my first run of the afternoon. The car understeered at Turn 6, which is a fast corner, I lost the line, got on the dirt, and hit the wall with the left side. Unfortunately, there is a bit too much damage to allow the team to get the car running again tomorrow, which means I won’t be able to make as much of this opportunity to test a Champ Car as I had hoped. As for Laguna Seca, I really like it. It has some fast corners and a good ‘rhythm’ to it, and is the sort of track I find very enjoyable to race on."

[Editor's Note: In fact most Champ Car teams have little or no spare cars available as they could only afford to buy a minimum number of new cars. If they arrive in Las Vegas in four weeks and wipe out some cars in practice and qualifying it will result in Champ Car having egg on its face as they will be forced to start with a short field. If the teams cannot afford to buy backup cars then Champ Car will have to purchase 3 or 4 extra cars and put them in a pool for teams to "rent" or "lease" should a driver destroy their only car available to them.]