Jourdain boosted by Corona deal.

Michel Jourdain Jr and the entire Bettenhausen Motorsports outfit were given a boost to their 2001 CART Fed-Ex Championship campaign this week when they announced a new sponsorship deal with Mexican beer company Corona Extra.

Mexican Champ Car racer Michel Jourdain Jr's Lola-Ford will sport the colours of Mexico's best selling beer, Corona Extra starting this weekend in Long Beach after his team, Bettenhausen Motorsports secured the deal with fellow sponsors Herdez.

The deal should further up the team's ambition to become a regular points scorer on the Champ Car circuit and resplendent in a new livery, Jourdain Jr sailed to 15th spot on the time-sheets in the opening day of practice for Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

"Overall it was a pretty good day," said the driver of his 1 minute 08.918 seconds effort. "In this morning's first session, we started with different set-ups on the two cars. After we ran both of the cars, we made a decision to go with the [spare] as our primary car and continued to work with it for the rest of the day."

Like the majority of other drivers, Jourdain found considerable time in the afternoon session, knocking 1.5-seconds off his best lap and improving three places in the standings although due to his 17th place finish in Mexico last month he will have to qualify in the firs qualifying group.

"This afternoon, we tried a few different things with the set-up on the car and we are pretty happy with the progress we made. We are still working on getting the car to work a little bit better in the rear and I think we have a good chance at getting that right tomorrow and qualifying in a better position."

In addition to a promising first day on the track, the mood behind pit-wall at Bettenhausen was also buoyant with the extra generation of funds giving the team a real shot in the arm.

Tim Amundson, Vice President of Corona's parent company, Barton Beers Ltd, enthused about the deal; "We're extremely excited to partner with Michel Jourdain on the CART circuit this year and look forward to generating exposure for Corona Extra with millions of race fans worldwide."

Jourdain was also delighted to sign up with Corona, who already sponsor the factory World Superbike squad, commenting; "We are looking forward to partnering with Corona Extra and I hope we can generate plenty of exposure by running strong all season. This is a natural partnership for me because, like Corona, I am from Mexico and have generated a following in my home country and in the US."