Da Matta Rules the Roost... ...and bolts for F1.(News CART champion Cristiano da Matta)

Byline: BILL McGUIRE

Let's set aside the dreary political and business stories that dominated the 2002 CART season. All that stuff is certainly newsworthy, not to mention crucial to the future of the series, but you're probably tired of reading about it week after week. Heaven knows we're growing tired of reporting it. (Give us a lap chart over a Securities and Exchange Commission filing any day.) To make a long story short, CART 2002 featured the wholesale departure of manufacturers, sponsors, teams and star drivers, most of them headed to the IRL. Meanwhile, the company's share price plummeted in the face of ever-mounting financial losses. But thanks mostly to the cunning battlefield maneuvers of new CEO Chris Pook, CART survived the year. What next season will look like is entirely unclear, but with totally revamped driver and team rosters, at least there will be plenty for the fans to talk about. Hey, it's all racing; it's all good.

Should be... interesting.

Anyway, while the fuss and bother in the paddocks and boardrooms continued as usual, there were some fairly interesting happenings out on the track. For instance, there was Cristiano da Matta's dominating performance. He scored seven wins and 11 podium finishes on his way to earning the CART championship and an F1 ride with Toyota.

Da Matta began 2002 just as he finished the 2001 season, with a win at the season opener in Monterrey, Mexico. That made it three straight wins for da Matta and his Newman-Haas Lola-Toyota, having won at Surfers Paradise and Fontana at the end of '01. Adrian Fernandez earned a popular pole at the Parque Fundidora circuit, but da Matta emerged from the first round of pit stops with the lead and held on for the win. Yes, it was a portent.

In the second event, in Long Beach, da Matta dove smartly under pole-sitter Jimmy Vasser in Turn One of the first lap to take an early lead, but a pit lane accident spoiled his result. Michael Andretti was then able to take his first Long Beach win in 16 years, and most likely the final win of his CART career. Bruno Junqueira won the following race at Motegi when the pace-setting Hondas of Paul Tracy and Tony Kanaan faltered, while Tracy (with perhaps a touch of blood in his eye from the controversial ruling at the Indy 500 the week before) won on the mile bullring in Milwaukee. It would prove to be Tracy's only win of 2002. Although he seemed to always be at the center of the action, he finished the year a disappointing 11th.

At Laguna Seca in June, race No. 5 of the season, da Matta really went on a tear. Qualifying on pole, he led 82 of 87 laps to take the win and retake the season points lead, which he would never relinquish. The next week in Portland he not only won again, he ran the table, scoring all 23 available points (pole, win, most laps led). Next he won on the mile oval in Chicago, then proceeded to take the pole and the win in Toronto on July 7. The four straight wins broke the backs of the competition. Going for a CART-record five straight wins in Cleveland the following week, da Matta collected another pole and led the first 19 laps, but dropped out with an electrical failure as Patrick Carpentier took his third career win. But by that time da Matta had a 50-point lead for the title, leaving his closest contenders-Carpenti-er, Dario Franchitti and fellow Brazilian Junqueira-fighting over scraps. Two more wins at Elkhart Lake and Miami, where he clinched the drivers' title, combined with second-place finishes in Montreal, Rocking- ham and Mexico City plus a third in Denver earned da Matta 237 points for the season.