Jani looking solid but unlucky in early CCWS races

By Andrew Cutler
April 23 2007

Since we have a couple of weeks until round four of the F1 season, I thought that I would update everyone on the progress of former Scuderia Toro Rosso test driver Neel Jani as he tackles his rookie season in the Champ Car World Series.

When Jani agreed to accept the offer from Red Bull to cross the Atlantic and race in Champ Car, he was signed to the PKV Racing team along with another rookie, Frenchman Tristian Gommendy. With everyone in the series having to learn the new Panoz DP01 chassis, it is perhaps an especially good year to be a rookie in CCWS. During the winter testing sessions, Jani was almost always at or near the top of the time charts, giving the team hope of great things to come.

At the qualifications sessions for the season-opening race on April 8 in Las Vegas, it became appearant that the team had missed the set-up somewhat, and Neel had to settle for 9th place on the grid. They had the set-up issues sorted by race time, however, and the young Swiss rookie made several on-track passes to improve his position to third and then, briefly, second. Unfortunately mechanical "gremlins" brought his race to a premature end. "Likely a failure of both the transmission and engine" Jani reported. "We were very fast and I was clearly on the way to the podium. It's a pity that the failure has stopped me".

Qualifying for Long beach, the second event of the season, would also find the team getting the set-up a bit wrong, and Jani would have to start from the 12th spot. He made the most of the day, finishing in a solid seventh place, despite issues with the refueling rig that added and extra two to three seconds to each pit stop.

By this past weekend in Houston, the PKV team had a better handle on the qualifications set-up and Jani would get the car into the 4th starting spot. He slipped down to 6th in the early going, but would rebound to 4th, only to be put out of the race when Katherine Legge clouted him from behind going into a turn, putting both cars out of the race. Neel would be classified as finishing in 15th spot. Nonetheless, team co-owners Kevin Kalkhoven and Jimmy Vasser (the '96 series champion) had nothing but praise for Jani and are confident that, if the run of bad luck would just end, he will find the podium before too long.

With the race at Zhuhai, China now postponed from it's May date until a yet-to-be-determined date in the fall, the Champ Car World Series will not race again until June 10 at Portland OR.