July 26,2003

Rainbow Saturday
By Doyle Potenteau
The Daily Courier

A veritable rainbow of colours flashed before Mike Richardson's eyes Friday. First, he saw orange. His blue and silver Prestige Inns Dodge, which suffered damage in Toronto earlier this month, has steering problems and is unreliable for Sunday's Barber Dodge Series race, part of Vancouver's annual Molson Indy autofest this weekend. Then he saw black, as in being black-flagged. During free practice Friday morning, his dayglow-coloured backup spilled oil onto the track after a loose transmission plug vibrated free. Lastly, he saw red. His temper began boiling when, after his pit crew fixed the loose plug, an accident took place and the red flag popped out, which all but gobbled up any free practice remaining. "It just wasn't my day," said Richardson, who was four seconds off the pace after getting only eight laps in. "Getting the plug fixed took around 12 minutes, then there was the accident. By the time they got all that jammed-up traffic cleared, I could only get one lap in. "I was really hoping to get some hot laps in, which I didn't. When I got those early laps in, everything was good. After that, (everything) just stunk." Despite having an off-day, the 35-year-old Kelowna resident is surprisingly upbeat. "What can you do?" he said. "All-in-all, it was a good day. The weather was nice and I know for qualifying (today), I'll be able to do much better. The track is in great condition and the times should be fast.

"There won't be any excuses." Qualifying takes place at 1 p.m., with Sunday's 45-minute timed race getting under way at 10:15 a.m. In Friday's free practice, the unofficial times were already better than last year's pole position time. In other action Friday, qualifying took place for CASCAR's race today on the 1.781-mile street circuit near False Creek. Results were not available by deadline. Today, CASCAR has 15-minute warm-up this morning, starting at 8:30 a.m., with racing at 3:45 p.m. In between those time slots, CART has practice (1o am.-11:15 a.m.), then qualifying (1:45 p.m.-2:45 p.m.), as will Barber Dodge (practice, 9:15 a.m.-9:45 a.m.; qualifying 1 p.m.-1:30 p.m.).