LONG BEACH GRAND PRIX: A SMALL FIELD, BUT ONE THAT'LL MAKE NOISE 19 AIM TO SHOW THAT IT'S QUALITY OVER QUANTITY.

Byline: Bob Keisser Staff Writer

LONG BEACH - Jimmy Vasser has been around Champ Car racing long enough to understand the concepts of quality and quantity, and he looks at the 32nd Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Sunday as a clear victory for quality.

There may just be 19 cars on the track today when practice and qualifying begins, but it's a deep field of 19, with a pack of both veteran and young drivers taking aim at defending Long Beach and Champ Car World Series season champ Sebastien Bourdais.

"This will be a tough season," Vasser said, noting this could be his last loop around Shoreline. "There might not be the number of car we used to see, but there were years when the car count was up and the driver quality wasn't as good as it is this year.

"It's just as tough or tougher to win a race here than it has ever been, because there are a lot of good drivers in the field who have already had some success here and in other areas of driving."

Consider some of the groups stalking Newman/Haas' Bourdais.

The vets: There's Forsythe veteran Paul Tracy, who has 30 career wins, and Bruno Junqueira, Bourdais' teammate, who has been the series runnerup three times, and the 40-year-old Vasser, Coyne's Cristiano Da Matta, the 2002 Champ Car champion, and PKV's Oriol Servia, who has been dogging the leaders for two seasons.

The speed racers: Justin Wilson and A.J. Allmendinger give RuSPORT a dynamic tag team that is capable of shadowing Newman/Haas' pair all weekend. Team Australia's Will Power drove well in two starts last season, and Antonio Pizzonia for Rocketsports brings 20 F1 races under his belt into the race.

The new kids on the engine block: It may be premature to do any reasonable forecast for the their first run in a Champ Car, but everyone is pretty high nonetheless on PKV's Katherine Legge, Coyne's Ian Heylan, Mi- Jacks Charles Zwolsman, and CTE's Dan Clarke.

That presents two-thirds of the field Sunday. If everyone drives close to their potential, the qualifying is going to be a precious competition today and tomorrow leading into a fast race Sunday.

"Sebastian and his team have done a great job," Tracy said. "I think as a challenger last year we were the prime competition for him. We led more laps and probably could have win five to seven more races if not for bad luck, mistakes and circumstances. Out of 14 races, we did not finish five times and you can't win a championship that way."

Bourdais certainly doesn't harbor any false confidence. The Frenchman who won six races and sat on the pole five times en route to nine straight top five finishes looms over his shoulder and sees talented men driving fast, heavy machines looking for what he's already won.

"The truth is every year gets tougher," he said."There are top engineers moving around to new teams (Jim McGee landed at PKV) and they're taking their successful set-ups with them. Year after year, everything spreads around. We've all been around such a long time using the same cars (Ford-Cosworth engines), competition is just very tight.

"Unless you're Mario Andretti, you can't depend on driving into your `50s. Open wheel racing is tough on the body, which is why we're seeing so many teams hiring good, young drivers."

The RuSPORT team is an example of a young group making huge strides. They ran Atlantics in 2003 before moving up to Champ Car in 2004 and both Wilson and Allmendinger have been posting podium and top ten finishes with regularity.

PKV added Legge and hopes she will benefit from the leadership of the veteran Vasser.

The cars will have a morning practice session today in advance of qualifying beginning at 2 p.m. There will be a 35-minute period during that session in which each driver will turn 15 laps and submit his or her best time. The top qualifier on each day is guaranteed a spot in the first row. Spots in the provisional grid will then be filled according to fastest lap time.

Saturday's qualifying repeats the process and gives teams a chance to better their spot in the grid.

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2006 TOYOTA GRAND PRIX OF LONG BEACH CIRCUIT MAP

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