Fernandez mystified by Nazareth retirement.

Owner-driver Adrian Fernandez admitted that he was puzzled by the problem which eliminated him from the Lehigh Valley Grand Prix at Nazareth on Sunday.

The Mexican was classified as finishing 19th in the 225 lap event, after his Reynard-Honda slowed without warning. Confident that he had a car good enough to push for the podium, Fernandez was left to rue the sort of luck that also eliminated him from his home event in Mexico back in March, and the suspicion that telemetry problems may have led him to run out of fuel.

"It's frustrating because we had a very good car," he said, "Something happened, electrical or something, and the car just shut off. There was no warning -- just no power, and no signs of anything. It happened right in the middle of turn two, and felt as if you had turned the switch off.

"I lost the telemetry right from the beginning, but I don't know if that's related. It's just speculation right now. I think we had a car for the top five. We were running in the top four most of the day, and we didn't need to pit again. It's sad, but it proves that the team is strong and we are going to be able to be strong in Japan also."

"We think we had a good car out there, and certainly had a good qualifying position," confirmed chief engineer John Ward, "The problem started pretty early. We lost telemetry and so we had to go back to the dark ages, calculating fuel with a slide rule. We were doing okay, just rolling along kind of guessing at the fuel. I really don't know what happened to the car at the end. It looks like it just shut off, and we don't know what the problem is at this point."

The second Fernandez car of Shinji Nakano finished in 15th position having been caught out on strategy when a late yellow flag flew.

"I had a good car in the race, but unfortunately my qualifying position was not good," the Japanese driver admitted, "The car felt strong in the warm-up this morning, and I had confidence for the race. The [last] yellow didn't help me, but the team did a good job and gave me a good car. If I had a little more luck today, I think I could have finished better.

"This was my first time here at this track, and I learned a lot this weekend. With the team, everything is getting better each race. The run today helps going into Motegi. It's good for the team and myself."

"I'm very, very happy today for the most part," commented team co-owner Tom Anderson, "To have both of the cars in our third race in the top ten for a good portion of the day was very satisfying. I'm disappointed for Adrian that the #51 car let him down for some reason, and we'll check into that before we go to Motegi.

"I'm very happy with Shinji's drive. We probably left him out too long and should have taken that pit-stop around lap 130. The other guys were able to go the distance and that yellow at the end obviously helped them. All in all, though, I'm very pleased."