CART MEDIA CONFERENCE

March 9, 1999

Greg Moore

GREG MOORE: We were down -- in preparation for Homestead, we haven't really done much. We received our fifth car because we're going to have a test car this year. We're doing a shakedown with that car at Firebird in Phoenix, which is a street course and we did one day in the drive and we did one day with the water trucks wetting the track down. For Homestead we haven't really done too much. For spring training, you know, we proved there that we are going to be quick. Now it's just a question of how we're going to do once we get to the street and the road courses.

GREG MOORE: It went extremely well. Reynard is making some new pieces that seem to be working and we seem to be coming up with a few setup changes that seem to be working extremely well, too. I think come Long Beach we should surprise a few people.

GREG MOORE: I think the four guys that are going to be on the teleconference today are four guys that are contenders for the championship. You have to put Michael Andretti in there, and also I think Bryan Herta. Bryan won his first race last year. Dario obviously has a good package. Jimmy has obviously got a great package. But I think there's six guys, and those are the six guys: Myself, Dario, Jimmy, Michael, Bryan and possibly Adrian. I'm not sure how the Swift is going to be. You can't look at any of those guys and say there's no way they are not going to win the championship, but hopefully I'm at the top of it. Dario and all those guys can fight for second.

GREG MOORE: I just plan on keeping the same thing I've been doing the last couple of years. Last year after the first half of the season, we were a championship contender. And I know I made a couple mistakes and we didn't have the drivability of the Mercedes once we got the street and the road courses that we wanted. But I think that everything that we've done over the winter has improved us as a team. Not only my side, but also Patrick's side, and I think Pat and I seem to be sharing information very, very well now, and that's only going to make our team better. Everywhere we go, we are both extremely competitively quick; and so, that's kind of lighting a fire under each one of us because racing drivers are notorious for always wanting to be first. Never mind if it's your teammate or whoever. There's some testing -- we've always been extremely competitive between just the two of us; so I think that's elevating our team to the next level, and it should be a championship contender for the rest of the year.

GREG MOORE: Well, as far as the series lacking charisma, I don't think you can really say that. When you look at -- the only thing it's going to lack is someone doing big, smoking burnouts if they won a race. I think if you look at the people that are involved in our championship, when you look at Max Papis, if anyone has got some charisma, that's a guy that's got a lot of charisma. Just different personalities: Myself, Jimmy the most laid-back guy of the series, just goes with the flow of things. Dario. There's a whole group of us. I think that the age of the drivers seem to be coming down a little bit, and so do the personalities. The personalities -- I'm 23 years old. Some of the other guys are 23, 24, 25, 26 years old. We've got more of a younger person's attitude toward our series, which is go out, have a good time, and do the best you can, but also off the race track, try and maintain a friendship, which I think quite a few of us has done. That's great. The fans I think see that, and they just don't see the fire and intensity when a guy was racing and doing the burnouts. But I think as far as real people go, they see us, and they see us as, you know, regular guys because we can be out there and be pals off the race track. And once you get on the track, you're fighting intensely. As far as my future at NASCAR, I mean, who really knows. This is my contract year this year. I'm up at the end of this season. My contract with Player's Forsythe is up; so, I'm kind of open to anything, really. I really, really enjoyed my time down in Daytona. It was something that I had a ton of fun. And just kind of opened my eyes to what life is like down there. It's something I can look at. I'm not going to say that I'm not doing it, but I'm not saying that I am doing it. It's just a question of what opportunities I have at the end of this year. Hopefully, I'm going to have a lot of things that I can look at, and, you know, decide where I want to be, both professionally and personally.

GREG MOORE: Actually, you're saying three or four years ago I wouldn't have considered it. But 1995, the middle of my Indy Lights championship year, I actually did go to Rockingham and I tested a Bush Grand National car; so I did that for two days just to see what I thought about it and stuff. So it has been something that I have been looking at for awhile as an option. But, you know, CART is still the closest thing to my heart, because I've got a lot of unfinished business here. But as the years go on, maybe I will think about doing something NASCAR. But instead of worrying about what I'm going to be doing next year and the next few years, I just want to concentrate on this season. And then halfway through or three quarts through, then I'll start thinking about where I'll be gong.

GREG MOORE: It's just another different style of driving. Anything that you learn in a CART car, you just kind of turn it around a 180 degrees and that's what works for NASCAR. The thing about it down there is that there's very little testing allowed. Sure, you do 36 or 37 races, but you just don't test. You just go to race tracks, and that's where your testing is during the race and that's one thing about it. You know, you look at the marketing that NASCAR has done with Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt, Mark Martin, Rusty Wallace, all these guys. They have made these guy drivers superstars, which is something that in the American eye that a lot of other series haven't been able to do yet. CART is trying to get that way, but they just haven't been as successful yet as NASCAR. That's something else that you look at, but you know, it's just something -- something different. And I think to be one of the best drivers in the world, you've got to be a well-rounded individual, and look at -- Mario did it. Look at the list of guys that have done it: Mario, A.J., Formula I, NASCAR, CART, and also sports cars. There's a lot of things that I can look at out, but the most important thing right now is to just win the championship this year.

GREG MOORE: I don't think to be remembered as one of the great drivers. You look at, you know, any driver in this world who you say -- except for the guys that race NASCAR. You look at any open-wheel driver and you say who are the best drivers in the world: Jackie Stewart, sterling Moss, James Hunt. You know, Jimmy Clark; make a big list like that. And if you ask stock car drivers, who are the best drivers in the world, they will say Richard Petty, Jeff Gordon, Richard Earnhardt, and kind of list people off that way. Personally, I want to be as successful in anything I do, be it CART, Formula 1, NASCAR or GT cars, whatever. And you know, it doesn't really matter, you know, if my career -- when my career is over, if I didn't race NASCAR or if I didn't race Formula 1 and I went to NASCAR from CART, or whatever. As long as I've been successful and had a great time, to me, one of the most important things is to be out there having fun. You know, if I'm not having fun, well, then you've got to kind of look at things and say, Well, how can I change this, or what do I have -- where else do I have to go to have some fun doing this?

GREG MOORE: It's tough to say one thing. Mercedes realized -- I think probably the biggest thing is that Mercedes realized they had a problem with the drivability of their race -- their race engine. It was good -- not it too bad in qualifying, but once you got to the race where you're doing different field turns and stuff, the engine wasn't as good as say the Honda or the Ford, and they realized that. They decided before the season was over last year, they needed to work on that. So that goes hand-in-hand with seeing how competitive we've been in the street and the road course kind of testing like Homestead on the road course or Sebring on the road course there or the Firebird. We have been extremely quick and extremely consistent; so not only are we -- are we faster one lap now, but we seem to be able to string it together for a whole fuel load. So I think things like that is really what has opened my eyes to this year being definite championship on contender, for sure.

GREG MOORE: I think with 20 races in our championship right now, you've got to almost split it in half. You've got to say, I'm going to concentrate on the first ten races; take a little bit of a look at how you've done the first ten and say, what are you going to change to win the second ten races. The whole outlook is toward the championship at the end of the year, but you've got to take it race by race by race and do the best that you can in each race. And if you've done that and at the end of the year someone has done a better job than you, and if I feel like I'm happy with what I've done, well, then someone just did a better job, or they had a better package. But I don't see this year that happening quite as easily as it did last year.

GREG MOORE: Let's hope so. I look at the performance that Patrick and I both had as a team there: We didn't test there. We didn't do any winter testing on any of the ovals with our 1999 cars. We knew that we could go to spring training and use it for what it was for, which was to show up and slowly work on the cars, and then at the end of the time, see where we end up. And I know some of the other teams spent quite a bit of time testing there. And we showed up: First day I was fifth, Patrick was first; and second day Patrick was first and I was second. So I think I might have ruffled a few feathers doing that, but the most important thing is we can show up at a race track and be quick right out of the box on the ovals. Now what we have to do is once we get to Long Beach, show everybody that, okay, they can do it on the ovals, but they can also do it on the street courses, too.

GREG MOORE: It's difficult to say. It doesn't break my heart that he was a lot behind me, let's put it that way. But you do kind of look and say, Well, who is doing what, who is doing -- who is doing long runs during spring training; who is going out trying to one lap very, very quickly. But, you know all changes come race day. Qualifying is important, but come race day, if you've got a good race car as we proved last year. We went to last because of an air jack problem, we worked our way all the way back up to second; so if you've got a good race car, everything can change in the race. It doesn't matter how fast you go. It's how consistent you can be.

GREG MOORE: For sure. We didn't do any testing on the ovals this winter. The only testing we did was in spring training. We spent 12 days in the street, road course type of circuit, trying to improve not only our setup on the tracks, but also helping Mercedes get the drivability out of our engine better. And, you know, knock on wood. I think what we've been doing this winter is -- has been very, very good. The most important thing is that we go out there and put on the best performance that we can. If another engine manufacturer is better on one weekend, then we might have to settle for being third or fourth or something like that. But that's what's going to be key to the championship this year is accepting the fact that someone might just have a better weekend than you, and you have to be happy finishing third, being the last guy on the podium instead of trying, trying, trying too hard and crashing or breaking the car and not getting any place.

GREG MOORE: I think that was one of the contributing reasons for sure. We were guilty of it last year as a team in saying, Well, we've qualified 9th and (inaudible). That's a very, very poor job. But then what we finally did at the end of the race weekend, we said we must not have been bad because we were 9th. We were 4/10 second off of 1st, but the next Mercedes was 15th, 8/th of a second behind us. So obviously we aren't doing that bad of a job. But we've worked harder on our setups on the street and the road courses, just change in geometry changes, shocks and springs and stuff like that. Things that during the season you wouldn't want to try because you are only at race tracks. You don't have time to test. So what we've done some things that we thought might work last year that we've put off this year, and it seems to be working quite well.

GREG MOORE: For sure. To have a two-car team and have two drivers that can drive cars very similar, which Pat and I can, that definitely helps out a ton because there might be a weekend where all day Friday I'm struggling with the track or with a poor setup or something, and then Friday night we take all of the data off of Pat's car and improve our car. Same thing; it goes vice versa. And so what that does it kind of let's you guys go, let's me go in one direction and let's Pat go another direction. And you can say, okay Greg's faster here; Greg's faster here, but Pats's also faster in these couple turns; so how can we join the two setups together and make an even better one than if he was doing it on a one-car team? And Pat being his second year on the team, for sure he's realized where he has to step up on his performance on the street courses and road courses and he's done that this year. Testing has been extremely good. We've kind of been lighting a fire underneath each other. He's been quick. I've been quick. It's just going back and forth, back and forth. At the end of each test day, it almost seems like a qualifying session where I'm out there and he's out there. We're kind of at opposite ends of the track, and we're both putting the best foot that we can, because we want to be the fastest at the end of the day. And thatÂ’s making it exciting for the mechanics; lighting a fire underneath everyone in the team. And I think that what weÂ’ve got going on this year is a very, very good situation. And I fully expect Patrick to win a couple races this year and, if not challenge, for the championship.