Hard work yields little reward for Haberfeld.

Mario Haberfeld and Walker Racing had a busy weekend as the Champ Car World Series visited the 1.5-mile oval at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but even after their best efforts, 14th place in the Bridgestone 400 Presented by Corona was all they were rewarded with.

"The Cummins Walker Racing team came to Las Vegas knowing that we would have to work hard to be competitive on a high speed oval with the Reynard chassis," Haberfeld said. "Then to make things even more difficult we developed an engine problem after just two laps during the first practice on Friday morning. The Walker Racing engineers and crew did a good job getting the car ready for qualifying, but since it was basically our first laps of the day we qualified 17th."

Haberfeld rolled off 17th when the green flag waved over a crowd of 70,000 and steadily tried to move his way up the order. He would end up gaining three positions before the end of the race, marking the 11th time in the year's 12 races that Haberfeld has improved his finishing position over his qualifying spot.

"The thing I am most pleased about is that we kept improving the car," said Haberfeld. "We made a lot of progress during the Friday night practice session particularly with the handling of the car in traffic and continued to improve the car throughout the race. By the end of the race we were competitive with everyone, but I still had to lift a little so I couldn't pass. Once I realized that was the situation I was able to adjust and at least defend my position."

Off the track, Haberfeld was also putting in time entertaining the Las Vegas Champ Car fans, participating as part of the Fan Forum driver panel. Haberfeld joined Paul Tracy and Rodolfo Lavin to take questions for a group of over 500 fans Saturday afternoon. Fans asked Haberfeld a number of questions including inquiries about his feelings on oval-track racing and the difference between Champ Cars and F3000 machines.

The series takes the next three weeks off before heading to Australia for the Lexmark Indy 300 in Surfers Paradise, Australia. The race was the only event on the Champ Car calendar last year that was won by a Reynard when Ryan Hunter-Reay took the victory.

"Fortunately, for the Cummins Walker Racing team the last two races of the season are on a street and a road race where we are more competitive," Haberfeld That gives me a lot of confidence that we can still achieve our goal of finishing in the top-10 in the point standings."