MOST NEW RULES PROVE WINNERS.

Byline: TIM HADDOCK  Motor Sports

LONG BEACH - On the bright side, there were more lead changes - one - in the first lap of the CART FedEx Series Grand Prix of Long Beach on Sunday than in the entire race last year.

The downside - pit strategy played a bigger part than fast driving in determining the winner of the race.

One of the new rules to improve the quality of racing on the CART series was to require drivers to pit within a designated number of laps. For Long Beach, that requirement was at least once every 29 laps.

The mandatory pit-stop rule was one of many new regulations implemented by CART this year. Here is a look at how some of the new rules affected the race:

--Mandatory pit stops: Lead changes were more abundant in this year's race than in 2001. One, when pole sitter Jimmy Vasser took the lead from Michael Andretti on lap 47 of the 90-lap race, it was a direct result of the mandatory pit-stop rule. Andretti was at his pit window limit and had to relinquish the lead. It was one of five lead changes in the race.

Andretti, who started 15th and whose pit stops were out of sequence with most of the rest of the field, took the lead back on lap 64, when he was able to pit under yellow, and after the other drivers pitted on lap 61.

``Maybe you need to have a niche in the strategy so a guy can come from the back and have a chance to win,'' Vasser said. ``Hey, the cards fell their way today.'' The move by Andretti and his crew made it his race to lose. And the mandatory pit stops made the last 26 laps of the Grand Prix of Long Beach the most exciting in years.

It took a little bit of luck for Andretti to come out the winner, but he isn't complaining about how he won the race.

``What goes around comes around,'' Andretti said. ``People kept telling me that and you gotta believe that. I knew we had something and finally luck went our way.''

--No more split qualifying: Every driver qualified at the same time instead of having split sessions for fast drivers and slow drivers. Two one-hour qualifying sessions of 15 laps each for the drivers were held over the weekend, the first Friday for the provisional pole, one championship point and a front-row starting position. The second one on Saturday was for one championship point and the race pole.

The reason for the rule change was to give every driver an equal opportunity to win the pole. But qualifying turned into a game of pit road chicken as drivers and teams waited to see who would take the cold track on cold tires first.

Apparently, the new qualifying format, according to Vasser, puts more luck than skill into winning a pole. The Long Beach pole winner said he could see how a driver who takes out early in the session could get stuck behind a car with cold tires and have to alter his course and line on the track because of it, thus putting his chances of winning the pole in jeopardy.

Especially at Long Beach, where starting position plays such an important part in how and where each driver finishes, giving each driver the same opportunity to win the pole is a rule that's been a long time coming. Although improved, the qualifying format could use some tinkering.

--Traction control: To the trained ear, traction control can be the difference between fractions of a second off a turn. Most race fans' ears aren't that finely tuned. But a fraction of a second over an 11-turn course such as Long Beach can amount to nearly a second a lap. Over the course of 20 laps, a driver who is effectively using traction control can build a substantial lead. Still, it doesn't really make the racing all that more exciting.

In the case of Max Papis, who finished third driving the Sigma Autosport Ford-Cosworth, being able to use traction control helps build a driver's confidence, but finishing well is a ``will that is always here,'' he said pointing to his heart. No amount of traction control can measure that.