CART New course puts Mexico City back in game

Sunday's Mexico Grand Prix will be the final event of the CART season.
MEXICO CITY (AP) -- It's a new twist on the old idea of a multipurpose park: Miller Park meets Monza.
Only a couple of years ago, Mexico City moved its main baseball field from the Social Security Stadium -- a wooden tomb beside a downtown cemetery -- to the awkward Foro Sol, built atop the remains of the Hermanos Rodriguez Autodrome -- a notoriously fast, bumpy and dangerous race track abandoned in 1992.
These days a fat strip of concrete runs from the fence in right-center, through where the shortstop plays, and over to where the field meets the stands near third base.
The outfield was home on Friday to guys who make their living driving twice as fast as a Nolan Ryan fastball.
Front row
Bruno Junqueira in a Lola-Toyota guaranteed a front-row start for Sunday's Mexico Grand Prix -- the final event of the CART season -- by leading the first day of qualifying with an average speed of 116.703 mph. The 200-mph stretch on the straightaway is tempered by 18 curves along the 2.786-mile track.
Despite a bit of a lurch as cars ease from asphalt to concrete entering the stadium, the arrangement seems to be working. At least until the first shortstop tries to turn a double play on freshly uprooted concrete. In fact, the park might be better for auto racing than baseball -- a testimony to the aluminum-seated glory of the Foro Sol.
Brazilian Cristiano da Matta, who will leave for Formula One next year after having clinched the 2002 CART title, called it "by far the best track in the CART series."
"It's an awesome place. It's very challenging," said Dario Franchitti, the third-fastest qualifier with a speed of 116.424 mph in his Lola-Honda. As more cars lay rubber on the road, he said, "the esses are getting faster all the time and it's getting more fun."
The old course was pretty much abandoned after the final Formula One race in 1992.
Pope John Paul II said Mass for nearly a million people on the racetrack grounds in 1999.
In fact, the site might be among the most hallowed of modern racing facilities.
Blessing
Mexico's Roman Catholic church hierarchy sent a monsignor to bless the track on its re-inauguration Nov. 5. Apparently not satisfied with the approval of the pope and a bishop, CART decided it needed to have its own chaplain officially bless the site yet again Wednesday.
Organizers spent about $30 million renovating the Hermanos Rodriguez course, which wends through tennis courts, ball fields, soccer grounds and now a pro baseball stadium in a "Sports City" in a working class section of eastern Mexico City.
Things like drains helped. Ron Dickson, who oversaw renovation, said much of the old bumpiness was from water sitting on the track, seeping under the pavement and pushing it up. Like much of Mexico City, the track was built on a lakebed.
Despite the new pavement, "it's still a little bumpy. But in '92 it was a lot more bumpy," said Christian Fittipaldi, who was in the last Formula One race here that year.
"This series races sometimes on very wild tracks," said Fittipaldi, second-fastest Friday at 116.587. "This is a great track."
"It's paradise," Junqueira broke in.