No go for Nakano at Nazareth.
CART rookie Shinji Nakano and his Walker team will not attempt to race at Nazareth this weekend after a testing crash ruled the Japanese rookie out of the original event in early April.
Shortly after finishing in a strong eighth position in his first ever CART event at Homestead, The ex-Prost Formula One driver crashed at the Milwaukee oval sustaining several injuries that would force him to miss the upcoming Champ Car events at Nazareth, Long Beach and Rio de Janeiro. Eventually, of course Shinji only missed the latter two races at the qualifying session at Nazareth.
CART rookie Shinji Nakano and his Walker team will not attempt to race at Nazareth this weekend after a testing crash ruled the Japanese rookie out of the original event in early April.
Shortly after finishing in a strong eighth position in his first ever CART event at Homestead, The ex-Prost Formula One driver crashed at the Milwaukee oval sustaining several injuries that would force him to miss the upcoming Champ Car events at Nazareth, Long Beach and Rio de Janeiro. Eventually, of course Shinji only missed the latter two races at the qualifying session at Nazareth.
When CART announced the rescheduled date of May 27th they also announced that the qualifying times set in April would still stand for the rescheduled race. They also stated that the second event would be a one day affair, with a single hour of free practice in the morning followed by the race in the afternoon. This would then allow Team Ganassi driver's Juan Montoya and Jimmy Vasser enough time to recuperate somewhat for the following day's Indianapolis 500 in which they were both competing.
The announcement also effectively said that any driver who hadn't participated in the original qualifying session but who did wish to take part in the race would have one hour in which to set-up and balance the car and then get to within 110% of Montoya's pole position time. For the Walker team and Nakano, who has extremely limited experience of running on ovals, this situation was too much and the team decided against travelling to Pennsylvania.
"Unfortunately the rules don't allow us to test at that racetrack before the rescheduled race," said a philosophical Walker. "For us to be able to make a serious attempt to qualify within 110 per cent of the pole speed, and get a race set-up in the one hour practice would be impossible."
Instead of going to Nazareth the team will continue to help Nakano to adapt to oval racing by testing at the two mile Michigan Superspeedway.
Walker meanwhile still has more than enough on his plate over the course of this weekend. On Sunday he will attempt to guide his 19 year old IRL prot?g? Sarah Fisher through her first Indy 500.
