Highway robbery costs Blundell season's best.

PacWest Racing's Mark Blundell was robbed of possibly his best result of the 2000 FedEx Championship Series when mechanical problems ended his day in the Motorola 220 at Road America.

Blundell, driving the #18 Motorola PacWest Reynard-Mercedes, started only 20th after red flag problems in qualifying, but was running as high as seventh when he was forced into the pits with his first gearbox problem of the year just seven laps from home.

The Englishman's best result of the year came in race four in Rio Brazil on 30 April, when he finished 7th after starting 23rd, and, on that occasion he won the Budweiser 'Hard Charger' award for making up the most places in the race. He would have done the same in Wisconsin if he had maintained his position, but it was not to be for the perennially-unlucky Englishman.

It would have been an even more impressive effort from the Motorola team had Blundell held on to seventh, as the three-times CART race winner had been forced to use an earlier-spec back-up engine after his race motor was found to have a problem on arrival at the track at 6am on race morning.

"The boys did a fantastic job in the pits, and we all just worked our hearts out all day," a disappointed Blundell said afterwards, ''We were looking at our best result of the season, and then I had trouble with the downshift in second and third gears. I can't really complain because that was our first gearbox problem all year and there were plenty of other teams that had similar problems today.

''We could not run our race engine because of a few problems and it was a matter of balancing fuel economy and speed with a power plant that was not latest spec. We gave it everything we had, but we just pulled up seven laps short. We still managed to finish eleventh and salvage a couple of points, though, but it would have been great to finish in the top six with Motorola sponsoring the event for the first time, but it was not to be."

Mauricio Gugelmin, driver of the Nextel-backed sister car, also showed a lot of promise in the race after starting tenth on the grid, but he only lasted 20 laps of the 55-lap contest on the spectacular 4.048-mile permanent road course. The Brazilian was working hard on making good fuel mileage, but lost power on the back part of the circuit, and had to call it a day.

"We lost a couple of places on the start, but we settled into a groove and were running consistently in the top ten," he said,
"The Nextel crew gave me some good stops, and we were looking pretty strong when we lost power on the back part of the track.
We were making the fuel mileage required, which was extremely hard, but to make it last just 20 laps is disappointing. I just have to look forward to Vancouver in two weeks time and hope I can reproduce results similar to 1997, when I won up there."

Gugelmin had also had to switch from his primary car after spinning into a wall near the pit-lane entrance in practice. The Brazilian got on the gas a little too early on the exit of turn 14 coming on to the main straight, and hooked across the track and into the wall on the inside of the circuit near the entrance to the pits. The impact badly damaged the left-hand side of the car and crunched the nose of the tub so badly that it was beyond repair.

The race was won by Canadian Paul Tracy, with Adrian Fernandez and Kenny Brack completing the podium.