CART MEDIA CONFERENCE

May 4, 1999

PJ Jones

PJ JONES: Thanks for having me.

PJ JONES: Not so much the pressure just from him, I mean, I put enough on myself, you know, I think that we got off to a slow start. I was hoping to get off to a little better start. I think that there is a lot of different factors that contributed to it. I think it took me a little bit longer to get comfortable with the new stuff that I had and swapping back and forth from Reynards to Swift and not getting a lot of test time in the car that I was going to race, I think contributed to it. Then some of it was just a lit bit of bad luck. I thought we had a better car than what we showed at Long Beach and we were in the Top-10 in practice and qualifying in Monterey, we just had a car that wasn't very good in the race. So I think -- I knew inside that we were going to have some good runs; it is just a matter of doing it and all the people thinking, oh, no, why did we hire him, you know, he hasn't done anything yet for us. But hopefully this is -- we turned the corner and we can stay up there in the Top-10 in points and hopefully sometime this year get a victory.

PJ JONES: He said, good job, but we didn't need that spin down the front straight-a-way.

He just wants to do good and I can understand it. He puts a lot of time, a lot of effort into the team and -- this is his hobby - not hobby, but this is his, you know, giant that he has got to keep going and keep all his sponsors happy and a lot of concerns, obviously.

PJ JONES: Well, in the past we have had some good cars there, you know, developing the engine last couple of years we haven't been able to prove it, but I think we have had good cars there and good handling cars, and I think that it is a good racetrack for me and I like it. I am looking forward to it. There is a lot of room to race; a lot of room to pass. And, you know, if we can just get our Swift handling for that track, I think we should be right there.

PJ JONES: No, I think that, if anything, it might be into the advantage of the Swift, you know, there that you have to run a lot less rear down-force, you know, you run -- you try to take as much wing out of it there as possible to get down the straight-a-way and try and coax it through the turns and try to go as fast as you can down the straight-a-way. This car has very good rear down-force and if we can just, you know, get the right -- come out of the box with the right setup and just keep developing that all weekend long, again, I think we should be very good.

PJ JONES: I think that it is a tough racetrack for us. I mean, it is hard to pass; a little bit rough in a couple of places. I like the fact that 1 and 2 reminds me of a short track, kind of reminds me like a turn like in Bakersfield or Winchester, Salem or some place like that where it is kind of a short track turn and in Turn 3 and 4, it is more like a mile oval track. I like that part of it. The only downside of the racetrack, it is hard to pass for us. It is similar to like Nazareth in the fact that in the past, I mean, you really got to be patient and you really got to have a good car to be able to pass some people.

PJ JONES: Yeah, we had the car right and we were able to take advantage of it. The key there to passing at Nazareth this weekend was just in traffic, if you can get a slower car up there holding up some cars in front of you, that is really how all the passes were made.

PJ JONES: Well, I got mixed emotions. I like to slide the car around. I come from a short track background and, you know, I don't like to run around in these places flat. First of all, I don't think we need to run 190 miles an hour through Turn 1 at St. Louis, and secondly, I want to be able -- I want to have to brake and I want to have to lift and get back in the throttle. For that sake I say no. But I would like to have the feeling of the big wings and yet have the speeds and being able to lift with these small wings. So I don't know how we get to that point. But that would be the perfect situation.

PJ JONES: I felt -- it felt great. I mean, you know, it has been a long time since we have had the stuff to run up front and be able to run right up there for the lead and the win and I was very excited. And it was, you know, we didn't start out on Thursday practicing, we didn't start out really good and Friday we just kept developing the car. We weren't that great on Friday. We made some changes on Saturday morning and before practice and everything seemed to come together. It had a decent qualifying effort and in the race the car was really, really good.

PJ JONES: A lot. Obviously my dad was, you know, more than the man -- obviously the man in the family, but the hard-core, you know, get-the-job-done-kind-of-guy. And my mom is much more on the softer side and taught us our manners, obviously, and how to present ourselves - I don't know if we learned very much. She was a big influence. I mean, she is the real supporter and takes care of us. And, the job she has done with my younger brother, you know, keeping him -- making the medical decisions she has and, you know, keeping him in therapy and getting to him where he is today after his accident in the sprint car, she is a true champion.

PJ JONES: Absolutely.

PJ JONES: I think mostly it is just about my car and how to go -- approach the weekend of how to set the car up. It was new for everybody this weekend. I think -- I don't know if we lucked out or, you know, if we were, you know, just hit upon something and kept hitting -- and continued to develop it and it worked out right for the race. We had a good car. I think that if we can just continue to tune the cars and have the same feeling that we did in Sunday's race for the rest of the races, I think we would be in good shape.

PJ JONES: Well, I mean, again, I like it. I like to slip and slide and, you know, I like to have to be gingerly with the throttle and have to hook the rear tires up. I come from a lot of dirt track experience and to where that was very important, can't be bleeding the tires all the time. You can't sideways all the time. You really got to learn how to hook the rear of the car up. I really -- I like that feel. I would like to see us have places or a situation where it might be a little bit easier to pass, but all and all, I am probably one of the only guys that say that the wings weren't that bad. I think they are going to continue to get better too, obviously, the car manufacturers Reynard and Swift and Lola are going to be able to give us a little bit more down-force and probably make the feeling even better.

PJ JONES: Not too bad. I have only run -- been in the car about -- only gone out about three times and we seem to be right there in lap time. We are working on some stuff with the car trying to get the balance a little bit better. It is a little bit windy here today. And, you know, we just barely got started, so if we can just hold the rain off and continue to develop the car, it should be a successful test.

PJ JONES: Well, it was really -- I mean, if you took the setup off by Swift and you tried to run it on a Reynard you probably wouldn't make it out of pit road and you would be in the fence. You have got to make the car turn a lot more with the Swift than you do with the Reynard. Adrian had some very good setups in the first two races. I was new and had never raced on the tires before which is a big, big difference. And, you know, never been in that kind of combination with the engine and all that. When I came here I didn't try to make any waves and I really didn't try to push any issue. I thought, well, he likes it, and he is doing well with it; maybe I need to learn drive more like his driving style. And I tried and I learned a lot from it. And I think that we are not too far off in the way we like the car. I just like to be able -- I think I like a looser car than he does, and I think that has cut me out of a couple of the races in the beginning and I think that, just me kind of more thinking about my own car and what I really want. Because in the past I have had very, very, very good oval cars, so I think that I learned a lot in the last couple of races. We just didn't have some very good results.

PJ JONES: Oh, absolutely. I think he is a great race driver. I think he has got a great future in front of him. Obviously, Toyota is coming on strong with engine and they are getting there, you know, it is really unfortunate they have to do it now after I spent five or six years developing it, you know, that they are this close now.

PJ JONES: Well, I think considering the way we ran this weekend I think that that is probably a pretty safe bet that we will continue to develop the rest of the year. If we come into a certain type of a racetrack that we really struggle or something like that, you know, I think anything could change. But I think -- you know, I think the team's future is with Swift. And I think they are doing everything they can to help us develop the car. They want to sell more cars to other customers and obviously they need to come out and make us as happy as possible because I think we are truly one of their customer-cars, or customers. I think that the car is going to be very good. We just have some fundamental things that we need to get a little bit better. Obviously it was good on Sunday, so, I can't imagine it being too far off in some of the other places.

PJ JONES: Yeah, he said when I was spinning down the front straight-a-way he was about ready to turn the TV over.

PJ JONES: Oh, I imagine. I don't he would have wanted me in the room. He gets uptight if anybody tries to talk to him during the race and imagine us being that competitive and -- he probably didn't sit down very much. He probably had the remote controls flying around the room and just pacing back and forth.

PJ JONES: Well, I have heard some talk about that and I think that one of the things is that the cars probably need more drag. And they are taking down-force off which is great, but I think they need more drag. They are so slippery right now through the air and they run so quick down the straight-a-ways that they need to be a little bit more boxy, something just to slow them down a little bit down the straight-a-ways and maybe then we can get a little bit more down-force back. But I am not an aerodynamicist. I think that it was one step CART needed to make to slow us down on the mile ovals; they made it. There is always a lot of opportunities to improve upon it. Maybe give us a little back or take some power away or put some drag into the cars.

PJ JONES: Absolutely. But I don't know what it would be like in traffic on the short oval. I think you have to have a lot of consideration there. I don't know what the down-force characteristic of that versus what we are running now; is it quite -- how much difference in the down-force level is and how it is going to -- obviously, you don't want to leave a big hole or void, you know, behind you as you are passing through the air for the guy behind you not to have any air and create a situation where you can't even run behind somebody. So they ought to look at a lot of different things and get some people that are more educated in aerodynamics besides us.

PJ JONES: Thank you very much.