The Indianapolis Star from Indianapolis, Indiana • Page D8

D8 MONDAY, AUGUST 13, 2007 2nd Sports THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR WWW.INDYSTAR.COM NASCAR NOTEBOOK Solid debut for Carpentier MIKE ROEMER Associated Press FINALLY: Sebastien Bourdais, who had some dominating performances in three previous races at Road America, gets his first win at the track. CHAMP CAR WORLD SERIES Bourdais conquers Road America at last DAVID DUPREY Associated Press CAR OF TOMORROW: NASCAR's new car, driven by Jeff Gordon, helped to even the competition at Watkins Glen according to Jimmy Johnson. solid. Despite a speeding penalty on pit road that dropped him from 10th to 39th midway through the 90-lap race, Fellows was fourth after starting 26th in place of Tony Raines in the No. 96 Chevy.

Said, who was given a ride in the Wood Brothers Ford when Bill Elliott generously stepped aside, was 14th after starting 39th. Busch to make it official Joe Gibbs Racing will welcome Kyle Busch into the fold for the 2008 season with a news conference Tuesday in Hunters-ville, N.C. With the driver set for the No. 18, the team now must settle on tying up sponsors and a manufacturer for Busch's car. JGR president J.D.

Gibbs said there was no deadline for deciding whether the team will extend its 16-year relationship with General Motors. Toyota wants to expand its seven-car lineup to 11 or 12 in the next few seasons. Toyota Racing Development general manager Lee White said the manufacturer didn't have a deal with JGR but had talked to the team. Etc. Gordon and Stewart have led 15 races, the most of any drivers.

Stewart's victory was his sixth on a road course, tying him with Richard Petty, Ricky Rudd, Rusty Wallace and Bobby Allison for second all time behind Gordon's nine. Former Champ Car driver leads for 7 laps and finishes 22nd in 1st Nextel Cup race Star news services WATKINS GLEN, NY. Patrick Carpentier was supposed to be moving to Las Vegas on Sunday. Instead, he moved up on the Nextel Cup radar. The former Champ Car driver, who made a sensational NASCAR debut in his native Montreal two weeks ago, finishing second to Kevin Harvick in a Busch Series race, was a respectable 22nd in his first Cup race and led seven laps early in the Centurion Boats at The Glen.

"I loved it," said Carpentier, who started 40th in the 43-car field in the No. 10 Dodge in place of Scott Riggs. "I finished the race. That's what I wanted. I got off the track a few times and got punted off by a couple of guys, then punted them back when we came back." Carpentier was third when the leaders pitted under caution on lap 24 and took the lead when Jamie McMurray relinquished the top spot to pit.

Carpentier stayed there until he had to make a stop. "I thought he adapted pretty quick," winner Tony Stewart said. "He was putting down some good laps. I was pretty impressed. I think pit strategy ruined his chances of a top 10.

The laps he led, if it didn't impress people, it should." Car of Tomorrow NASCAR's Car of Tomorrow made its debut at Watkins Glen International, and without much practice on the highspeed road course there were plenty of altercations. There were eight cautions and a red flag in the Centurion Boats at The Glen amidst a flurry of unforced errors. Jeff Gordon lost the race when he spun out on his own while leading with two laps left. Stewart had done the same thing on the same turn midway through the race, but had enough time to atone for his mistake. "It (the Car of Tomorrow) probably does put more cars up front and capable of running for the win," said Jimmie Johnson, who finished third, the best showing of his career on a road course.

"But you've got a lot of good drivers and a lot of good teams. We're all running the same speed, so when you see a small bobble you've got to make a bansai move. I think that's just because the level of competition is getting closer and closer between the top 10." Road-course warriors Gordon said he thought the Car of Tomorrow would give road race aces Boris Said and Ron Fellows a good shot at winning the Centurion Boats at The Glen. Neither made that breakthrough victory, but they were just one full-course caution, and that came on the first lap. "I know Sebastien wanted to win Elkhart Lake really, really bad before he leaves the United States," said Craig Hampson, Bourdais' crew chief at New-manHaasLanigan Racing.

After months of speculation, Bourdais confirmed Friday he would join F-l's Scuderia Toro Rosso team in 2008. That is another reason Bourdais was thrilled with his 28th win in 69 Champ Car starts. Rookie Robert Doornbos and second-year driver Will Power, his closest pursuers in the championship, both ran into trouble, allowing Bourdais to move out to a 37-point margin with five races remaining. Doornbos came into the race second in the standings, 12 points behind Bourdais. He started third but fell far back after a collision with Minardi USA teammate Dan Clarke cost him a long pit stop.

That led to a 14th-place finish. Power started second but wound up 16th after his transmission froze up. He remained third in the standings but now trails Bourdais by 53 points. The biggest accident of the race came on turn five of the first lap when Paul Tracy and rookies Simon Pagenaud and Ryan Dalziel came together as Pagenaud tried to go three-wide. All three were able to continue after pitting, with Pagenaud finishing 11th and Tracy 12th.

Associated Press ELKHART LAKE, Wis. Sebastien Bourdais kept waiting for something to happen, for yet another bad break to keep him from winning at Road America. He needn't have worried. Bourdais not only conquered a track that has stymied him in three previous tries, he took a big step toward an unprecedented fourth straight Champ Car title. The Frenchman, who will move to Formula One in 2008, had failed to win on the 4.028-mile, 14-turn natural terrain road course despite being dominant at times.

But he closed the deal in Sunday's Generac Grand Prix, starting from the pole and overpowering the rest of the 17-car field in picking up his fifth win of the season. After doing some smoking burnouts in celebration, a smiling Bourdais hugged just about everybody on his team after scrambling from his No. 1 Panoz. "It was just about a perfect weekend and a great car," said Bourdais, who blew away the competition in qualifying, winning the pole by more than 1.5 seconds, before leading 51 of 53 laps in the 1-hour, 40-minute timed race. But Bourdais, who has looked like a winner here before only to be denied because of caution flags and strategy by other drivers, wasn't comfortable until he saw the checkered flags waving.

This time, though, there was NHRA Force edges Bernstein in battle of legends DAVID DUPREY Associated Press Montoya (center) pushes Kevin Harvick as a member of the safety crew approaches after the two drivers one during the Nextel Cup race. Harvick got out of his car to confront Montoya after the cars got together. for his last Funny Car victory. Bernstein is 13-8 against Force, including a 6-2 record in finals. "This race took me back to 1978 when Kenny Bernstein was the king and he beat me and I told myself that one day I'd beat him," Force said.

"But then he left the class and I never got my chance." Force has reached the final round in four of the past five races, lifting him to fourth in points. Coughlin's 50 career wins have come in both Pro and Sportsman categories. He got his third Pro Stock win of the season Sunday, giving him 37. His 13 sportsman wins are spread among four classes: Super Stock (seven), Super Gas (four), Competition (one) and Top Dragster (one). GET OUT OF MY FACE: Juan Pablo were involved in a collision in turn NASCAR Earnhardt's Chase chances take a hit with blown engine.

From Dl back. Jeff has won four championships and 79 races. He's the last guy you expect to have a problem like that." All but assured of a spot in the Chase for the Nextel Cup championship, both Stewart and Edwards fought hard for the victory. The top 12 drivers in the standings after 26 races will race for the title and the points for every driver will be reset at 5,000, but each win counts for an extra 10 points once the Chase begins. Gordon and Jimmie Johnson lead the series with four wins, Stewart has three and Edwards one.

Edwards made a desperate fi RACE FOR THE CHASE (Top 12 after Sept. 8 qualify for Chase for the Nextel Cup) Driver Pts. behind 1. Jeff Gordon 2. Denny Hamlin 344 3.

Matt Kenseth 432 4. Tony Stewart 445 5. Carl Edwards 560 6. Jeff Burton 578 7. Jimmie Johnson 595 8.

Kyle Busch 627 9. Clint Bowyer 717 10. Kevin Harvick 729 11. Martin Truex Jr. 797 12.

Kurt Busch 855 13. Ryan Newman 951 14. D. Earnhardt Jr. 955 15.

Greg Biffle 1,067 Results: Entire race field. D9 nal try for another in the rapid four-turn inner loop coming out of the high-speed esses. Denny Hamlin was second, Jimmie Johnson third, Canadian road race ace Ron Fellows fourth and Robby Gordon fifth. Dale Earnhardt Jr. suffered a big blow to his chances of making the Chase with just four races remaining before the cut.

Earnhardt was running up front much of the day. But while running third behind Gordon and Kurt Busch, the engine in the red No. 8 Chevrolet blew, ending his day on lap 63. He finished 42nd. It was the fifth DNF of the season for Earnhardt; four have been engine-related.

He entered the day trailing Busch by seven points for the 12th and final spot in the Chase and dropped to 14th, four points behind Ryan Newman and 100 points behind Busch, who rallied to finish 11th after being penalized for speeding on pit road. "I was hoping for a good showing," Earnhardt said. I'm kind of disappointed. We have a couple of races left and there's no telling what will happen in those." Rookie Juan Pablo Montoya, who won a Busch Series race in Mexico and the Cup race at Sonoma in June, was bidding to become the first driver in NASCAR history to win three road races in a season. He failed in Saturday's Busch race, finishing 33rd after being involved in an accident, and on Sunday he had another altercation.

Montoya and Harvick got together with less than 20 laps remaining in the 90-lap event while both were running in the top 10, and ended up in a shoving match after their cars got banged up. Harvick finished 36th and Montoya was 39th. Associated Press BRAINERD, Minn. John Force won his 125th Funny Car event Sunday by beating Kenny Bernstein by about two feet in a meeting of drag-racing legends. In the two legends' first meeting in 18 years, Force's 4.794-sec-ond run at 316.60 mph was faster by .0048 seconds.

Bernstein's son, Brandon, beat Larry Dixon in the Top Fuel final with a run of 4.525 seconds. In Pro Stock, Jeg Coughlin became just the 11th racer in NHRA's 56-year history with 50 national wins when he beat Greg Anderson. Andrew Hines beat teammate Eddie Krawiec in an all-Harley-Davidson Pro Stock Bike final. Force and Bernstein last faced each other in 1989 at the Super-nationals in Englishtown, N.J., which Bernstein went on to win Complimentary Clubhouse Admission.