The 2002 Molson Indy Vancouver was a Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) motor race held on July 28, 2002, at Concord Pacific Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in front of 66,134 spectators. It was the tenth round of the 2002 CART FedEx Championship Series and the 13th running of the event. Dario Franchitti of Team Green won the 100-lap race from the third starting position. His teammate Paul Tracy finished second and Mo Nunn Racing driver Tony Kanaan came in third.
Cristiano da Matta entered the race with the Drivers' Championship lead, as did Toyota in the Manufacturers' Championship. Despite a poor performance in the first qualifying session on Friday, da Matta rebounded a day later to clinch the pole position by recording the fastest lap time on Saturday. He led the first 35 laps before making a pit stop. Tracy assumed the lead but needed to pit twice more, while his other competitors only needed one more stop. Da Matta reclaimed the lead once Tracy pitted on lap 64, but suffered a gearbox failure and subsequently retired from the race, allowing Franchitti to assume the lead. The race was briefly paused for a lap-91 crash which left Adrián Fernández with a contused hip. Franchitti led the final five-lap stint to achieve his eighth CART victory, which he dedicated to his late friend Greg Moore.
Da Matta continued to hold the lead in the Drivers' Championship, but Franchitti's win meant that he was promoted to second place in the standings and reeled in on da Matta. Michel Jourdain Jr., who scored points for the tenth successive race, tied Bruno Junqueira for fourth place. Though their advantage over Honda had also slightly diminshed, Toyota still led the Manufacturers' Championship with nine races left in the season.
Background
The Molson Indy Vancouver was an annual open-wheel car race that was introduced to the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) schedule in 1990. The 13th edition of the event was included as the tenth of 19 races in CART's 2002 FedEx Championship Series and the second of three races to be held in Canada. It was held at Concord Pacific Place, a 12-turn, street circuit, in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sunday, July 28, 2002. The event was moved from its traditional date on Labor Day weekend to make way for the returning Grand Prix of Denver. Heading into the race, Cristiano da Matta led the Drivers' Championship with 120 points, 50 more than Bruno Junqueira in second and a further six ahead of Dario Franchitti in third. Patrick Carpentier and Michel Jourdain Jr. both had 62 points each and were tied for fourth place. In the Manufacturers' Championship, Toyota led with 166 points, Honda was second on 134, and Ford-Cosworth held third on 114.
At the midway point of the 2002 season, da Matta was the clear favorite to win the title, having already achieved five wins (including a series record-matching four-win streak, which ended in the preceding round, the Grand Prix of Cleveland, due to a mechanical failure). He believed that several factors led to his dominance in the season, including his team, engines, chassis, and tires, and was excited to race at Vancouver again, as he considered it "one of my favorite race cities". Three-time Molson Indy Vancouver winner Michael Andretti was set to participate in his 300th CART race. He was pleased with his performance throughout the Cleveland race weekend and hoped to carry over what his team learned for Vancouver. After unwinding from his "emotional" win in the Grand Prix of Cleveland two weeks prior, Carpentier was excited to race at Vancouver in front of his Canadian fans.
A total of 18 cars were entered for the race, representing 12 different teams. There was one change of driver prior to the race. Townsend Bell was let go by Patrick Racing following a string of crashes which culminated in him being placed on indefinite probation by CART for crashing into Junqueira during the Molson Indy Toronto. For the next five races, he was replaced by Oriol Servià, who was previously left without a ride after PWR Championship Racing shut down early in the season. Jim McGee, general manager of Patrick Racing, described Bell as "cocky and aggressive – two things a good racer needs," but believed that he needed "a little more time."
Practice and qualifying
Friday, July 26
Two practice sessions preceded the race on Sunday, one 90-minute session on Friday and one 75-minute session on Saturday. Kenny Bräck led the practice session on Friday morning with a lap time of 1 minute and 1.359 seconds, followed by Franchitti, Paul Tracy, Christian Fittipaldi, and Jourdain. The session was stopped three times, first to repair a right-side tire wall at turn seven, second for Andretti spinning backwards into a left-side tire barrier in the first turn, and third for Jimmy Vasser stopping at turn eight.
Qualifying was split into two 60-minute sessions, one each on Friday and Saturday afternoon. A minimum of 45 minutes were guaranteed to be held under green-flag conditions, and each driver was allowed to complete up to 15 timed laps per session, with their fastest times determining their starting positions. The fastest driver(s) of each session would be awarded one championship point and ensured a front-row position on the starting grid. More than half of the session passed by before the drivers began recording their laps. Under cool and clear weather conditions, Tracy set the fastest time at 1 minute and 1.888 seconds. Dixon took second place with a lap that was 0.051 seconds and demoted his Chip Ganassi Racing teammate Bräck to third. Franchitti held the top position for much of the session's first half, but was dropped to fourth place by the end. Fittipaldi was unable to qualify higher than fifth because of the traffic that impeded him.
Jourdain and Andretti set the same lap time (1:02.195), but Jourdain was given the sixth position over Andretti in seventh because he recorded the time before Andretti finished his run. Forsythe Racing drivers Alex Tagliani and Carpentier took the next two positions, followed by Toranosuke Takagi in tenth, Shinji Nakano in 11th, and Tony Kanaan in 12th. Junqueira, 13th, brought the session to an early end when he bent his right-front suspension from clipping the turn five wall, causing him to crash into a left-side wall approaching turn six and slide across the track into the tire walls at the runoff area. Vasser topped the charts with a 1-minute, 1.979-second lap which would have placed him third, but on his next lap, he backed into a tire wall at the sixth corner. The resulting red flag from the incident meant that Vasser's best time was negated, dropping him to 14th. Servià, 15th, was hampered by a faulty shifter and the stoppage from Junqueira's crash. Da Matta took an unusually low 16th position because of fuel pressure issues in his primary car that his team attempted to fix throughout most of the session. By the time he switched to a backup car, all of the drivers were already on-track and obstructed him from putting down a quicker time. Mario Domínguez and Adrián Fernández were in the final two provisional positions.
Saturday, July 27 On Saturday morning, Tracy recorded the quickest time of the weekend thus far at 1 minute and 0.778 seconds, with da Matta, Andretti, Fittipaldi, and Franchitti rounding out the top-five. Three incidents prompted red flags in the session: Junqueira backed into the left-side turn wall in turn one, Kanaan spun and stalled in the third turn, and Carpentier slammed the tire wall head-on in the exit of turn one, which ended the session with three minutes left.
Overcast skies cooled the circuit, thus allowing 11 of the racers to post faster times in the second qualifying session than Tracy's time from the first session. As opposed to the day before, many drivers took to the track and completed their 15 allotted laps well before the session concluded. With a time of 1 minute, 0.339 seconds and a speed of , da Matta secured his fifth pole position of his career and the season and broke the track record established by Franchitti in 2000. Tracy began his qualifying run later than most in order to take advantage of a clear track, but minor slipups caused him to fall short of da Matta's time by 0.163 seconds. Franchitti's team made adjustments to his car, but the alterations slowed his pace on his second run and prevented him from starting higher than third.
Dixon and Andretti equaled their best qualifying results of the season in fourth and fifth, respectively, Kanaan drove with an entirely different setup to improve from 12th to sixth, ahead of seventh-place Fittipaldi and eighth-place Tagliani. Vasser struggled with understeer and took ninth. Chip Ganassi Racing teammates Bräck and Junqueira started tenth and 12th, respectively, with the latter driving in his backup car because of his crash on Friday. They were split by Fernández, who took the 11th starting position despite enduring slight oversteer. Nakano, 13th, experienced a clutch failure that his team was unable to repair before the session ended. Takagi and Servià were in the next two positions. Carpentier, Domínguez, and Jourdain all withdrew their Friday qualifying times to improve their starting positions with their backup cars, but they wound up taking the final three positions.
Qualifying classification + Final qualifying results Driver Team Best 1 6 Cristiano da Matta Newman/Haas Racing 1:03.020 1:00.339 1:00.339 1 2 26 Paul Tracy Team Green 1:01.888 1:00.502 1:00.502 2 3 27 Dario Franchitti Team Green 1:01.990 1:00.559 1:00.559 3 4 44 Scott Dixon Chip Ganassi Racing 1:01.939 1:00.650 1:00.650 4 5 39 Michael Andretti Team Motorola 1:02.195 1:00.749 1:00.749 5 6 10 Tony Kanaan Mo Nunn Racing 1:02.509 1:00.763 1:00.763 6 7 11 Christian Fittipaldi Newman/Haas Racing 1:02.179 1:00.779 1:00.779 7 8 33 Alex Tagliani Forsythe Racing 1:02.217 1:00.869 1:00.869 8 9 8 Jimmy Vasser Team Rahal 1:02.754 1:00.942 1:00.942 9 10 12 Kenny Bräck Chip Ganassi Racing 1:01.948 1:00.979 1:00.979 10 11 51 Adrian Fernández Fernández Racing 1:03.407 1:01.050 1:01.050 11 12 4 Bruno Junqueira Chip Ganassi Racing 1:02.602 1:01.194 1:01.194 12 13 52 Shinji Nakano Fernández Racing 1:02.470 1:01.249 1:01.249 13 14 5 Toranosuke Takagi Walker Racing 1:02.340 1:01.411 1:01.411 14 15 20 Oriol Servià Patrick Racing 1:02.912 1:01.431 1:01.431 15 16 32 Patrick Carpentier Forsythe Racing 1:02.323 1:01.471 1:01.471 16 17 55 Mario Domínguez Herdez Competition 1:03.081 1:01.499 1:01.499 17 18 9 Michel Jourdain Jr. Team Rahal 1:02.195 1:01.740 1:01.740 18 Source:
Warm-up The drivers took to the track at 9:30 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (UTC−07:00) for a 30-minute warm-up session under partly cloudy skies. Fittipaldi was fastest with a 1-minute, 2.047-second lap, outpacing Newman/Haas Racing teammate da Matta, Bräck, Jourdain, and Nakano. Servià caused the only stoppage of the session when he stalled after spinning in the second turn.
Race