Gordon Kirby's Inside Track (da matta)

[luke]

Vanderbilt Cup champion with Newman/Haas in 2002, Cristiano da Matta tackled Formula 1 with Toyota's fledgling factory team in 2003 and '04, then returned to Champ Car with PKV Racing. From the start it was clearly going to be tough for PKV to match the likes of Newman/Haas and Forsythe, but da Matta and Jim McGee used their collective race smarts to score a keen strategic victory at Portland in June. Then at Cleveland the next weekend da Matta qualified on the front row and was leading the race when he crashed while trying to lap Marcus Marshall.

Portland turned out to be the season's high point as both da Matta and Jimmy Vasser struggled to get out of the midfield at many remaining races. Da Matta crashed at the start in both Denver in August and Surfers Paradise in October and by then the romance between Cristiano and PKV was over.

"I think in many parts of the season there was a lot of pressure on everyone in the team for results, not just on me, but everyone--myself, the engineers, mechanics, everyone," da Matta remarked. "I think the pressure for results disrupted the team a little bit. If the environment around the team isn't right and people are not working happily, it's hard for everyone in the team to produce absolutely their best."

http://www.champcarworldseries.com/N...e.asp?ID=10173

[Snrub]

I think CDM has it in him to still do some pretty special stuff at Coyne. As the artical correctly states, few drivers of his caliber and past success would drive for DCR.