Christian Fittipaldi - Championship 'blue' horse.

One of the real highlights of Sunday's Freightliner/GI Joe's 200 was the fighting drive that carried Christian Fittipaldi's Newman-Haas Racing 'Bluelight special to third place overall in highly treacherous conditions that caught the Brazilian out on the opening lap but then laid down to a beautiful display of controlled aggression that would surely have seen the Brazilian take the winners laurels had the race been allowed to run its' full course.

If it hadn't have been for an opening lap incident in which Christian Fittipaldi followed his countryman Helio Castroneves off the track at turn six onto the grass then, in all likelihood, the former would have romped home to victory in Sunday's Freightliner/GI Joe's 200 at the Portland International Raceway. As it was that small off-track excursion left the Newman-Haas driver in 19th place and playing catch-up for the rest of the day.

A true sign of Fittipaldi's wet weather acumen is that in the final 27-lap green flag run to the chequered flag he disposed of Oriol Servia, Dario Franchitti, Scott Dixon, Max Wilson and Patrick Carpentier and cut the gap to leading pair Max Papis and Roberto Moreno from over six seconds to less than 3.5 as he came home for his fourth top five result in the last five races and vaulted from 11th to fifth in the title chase. Despite that performance, Fittipaldi was still not satisfied.

"I want to apologize to the Kmart team for what happened at the beginning of the race when I went off track by myself," said the driver. "I had a small "off" by a few centimetres. It hurt us and we fell way back but most of all I am happy for the points after we came back and finished third. What screwed me up was when the track started drying in the end because you would run on a dry part then a wet part for the last six or seven laps. It really cost me a lot. If it would have stayed more wet, I could have made more gains."

"I always look forward to the race here in Portland because we always run well. We had a slow start to the season but there are many races in front of us for the Championship and we are coming back strong. The thing that makes me happiest today is the amount of points we scored. The top two had one hell of a race and didn't make any mistakes and that is why they are up there and I am not. Overall, considering everything, finishing third is pretty good. We charged back at the end of the race."

Bad luck also befell Fittipaldi's team-mate Cristiano Da Matta who ran second in the opening laps before running into the back of Max Papis under caution when the Italian suddenly slowed in front of the Brazilian and forced the early-season points leader onto the grass where he too fell to 19th position.

"When we were under yellow I was keeping my tires warm and was on top of the situation but
Max did something strange and I hit him in the back and went off track," quoted the disgruntled driver. "The track was very slick and that is why you saw so many cars going off because we didn't have any traction. It's disappointing that we dropped so far back and didn't get back up there. We still held fourth place in the points but it looked like we were capable of scoring a lot of points this weekend. I felt I had a good car in dry conditions and wet conditions. It just didn't work out for us today but we are pretty confident we will be competitive again in Cleveland."