Mixed fortunes for Fernandez racing.

Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach had mixed fortunes for the Fernandez racing team. Owner/driver Adrian Fernandez finished tenth in the race having started from seventh on the grid. After a series of mishaps in the pit lane the day ended with a fuel pressure problem.

"Not a good day," commented Fernandez. "It was too much work with too little to show for it. The car was very good from the beginning. The first incident happened when I was coming into the pits. They called [Cristiano] da Matta out when I was coming in and I was already ahead of him. They just threw him right in front of me. Of course we lost a lot of time and a few positions. I recovered some of the positions, but then we had a slow stop and I lost two positions. I came out of the pits, and I think it was [Paul] Tracy who hit me and spun me around. I lost a few positions again, but then passed both [Dario] Franchitti and Tracy. At the end, we had a fuel pressure problem."

Shinji Nakano on the other hand finished the race two places above how he qualified - in twelfth position.

"The car was okay up to the point where I started to have fuel pressure problems," said Nakano. "Finally we had to stop. It was a tough day."

Tom Anderson, Co-owner/Managing Director, explains how 'that's racing': "Today again proved that CART racing is very exciting," he said. "I don't think anyone could have pictured what happened today during this race. If someone would have said that Cristiano da Matta would be parked in our pits during one of our stops, I would have found that a little hard to believe but in essence that's what happened. All in all, it was a difficult day. Adrian had mechanical problems at the end as well as getting a friendly shove from one of his compadres out on the race track which put him back. Fuel pick up problems at the end caused him to drop another three places. Between bumper cars and mechanical problems, he didn't have a good day. Shinji had a mechanical problem with his fuel pressure dropping. We need to dig pretty deep into these Lola chassis to see what's going on with our fuel systems. At the moment, everything is not working as it should and there is just a short time to get it fixed before Motegi."