The 2001 Michigan 500 was a Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) race held on July 22, 2001, at Michigan International Speedway in Brooklyn, Michigan, before a crowd of 40,000 spectators. Branded as the 2001 Harrah's 500 Presented by Toyota for sponsorship reasons, it was the 11th round of the 2001 CART season, the 32nd running of the event, and the last time the event was held to CART rules as it became an Indy Racing League (IRL) race in 2002. Forsythe Racing's Patrick Carpentier won the 250-lap event by 0.243 seconds over Dario Franchitti of Team Green and Bettenhausen Racing's Michel Jourdain Jr. was third.
The season points leader going into the race, Kenny Bräck, was awarded the pole position when qualifying was cancelled due to rain. The starting grid was determined by the fastest lap times from the third practice session. Bräck led until his teammate Max Papis overtook him on lap six. Papis and Bräck exchanged the lead for six laps, which ended when Bräck strengthened his hold on the position. The lead changed 60 times among ten different drivers, with Papis leading the most laps (83). On lap 248, Carpentier moved to the lead, and held it until Franchitti and Jourdain overtook him on the final lap. Carpentier's lapped teammate Alex Tagliani passed Franchitti and Jourdain to provide Carpentier with drafting assistance at the exit of turn four, allowing Carpentier to achieve his first CART victory.
Bräck still led the Drivers' Championship with 83 points, but he failed to finish after a collision with his teammate Papis on the 233rd lap. Franchitti moved from fourth to second and lowered Bräck's lead to three points. Hélio Castroneves kept third, while Michael Andretti fell to fourth after his engine failed. His teammate Cristiano da Matta overtook Gil de Ferran for fifth. Honda increased its Manufacturers' Championship lead over Toyota to 20 points, while Ford Cosworth kept third with ten races left in the season.
Background
The Michigan 500 was confirmed as part of CART's 2001 schedule in August 2000. It was the 32nd consecutive year that the Michigan International Speedway had held a race in the series and the eighth round to occur in the United States that year. The event was the 11th of 21 scheduled races for the 2001 season, and was to be held over a distance of 250 laps on July 22 of that year. On July 19, 2001, three days before the race, gaming corporation Harrah's Entertainment signed on as the race's title sponsor. The event would henceforth be known as the Harrah's 500 Presented by Toyota.
Before the race, Team Rahal driver Kenny Bräck led the Drivers' Championship with 83 points, 10 ahead of Michael Andretti in second and a further three in front of Hélio Castroneves in third. Dario Franchitti was fourth on 65 points, ahead of fifth-placed Gil de Ferran with 58 points. Honda led the Manufacturers' Championship with 158 points; Toyota was second on 142 points, 12 ahead of Ford Cosworth in third. Juan Pablo Montoya was the race's defending winner from the 2000 edition; he did not enter the event because he had left CART after the 2000 season and moved to Formula One. There were nine Brazilian drivers. four Americans, three Canadians, two each from Italy, Japan and Mexico and one each from New Zealand, Scotland, Spain and Sweden.
In June 2001, it was announced that Michigan International Speedway would not hold a CART race for the 2002 season. Track president Brett Shelton said the circuit and its parent company International Speedway Corporation (ISC) sought to pursue other alternatives. It was later reported that Michigan International Speedway requiested from paying sanctioning fees for the event, estimated to be around $2 to $2.5 million, to alleviate the financial losses from decreasing track attendance. Other reasons included the lack of promotion of the event by the ISC and CART compared to the promotion of an ARCA stock car race held at the same track. Andretti had mixed feelings on not returning to the track, saying from a spectator viewpoint, it would be a loss for television. However, he spoke of his relief at CART not returning to Michigan International Speedway, citing series regulations on top speeds. Michigan International Speedway went on to hold a race in the Indy Racing League (IRL) (later IndyCar Series) from 2002 to 2007.
For the Harrah's 500 and the season-ending Marlboro 500 in November, a reduction of permissible manifold value pressure from to was mandated by CART after the series and its engine manufacturers reached an agreement over how the problem should be dealt with when Toyota complained that Ford Cosworth and Honda developed a turbocharger pop-off valve technology improvement at the Tenneco Automotive Grand Prix of Detroit in June. CART also instructed all teams to run a new version of the Handford device, which had a extension to the backboard below the rear wing. It lowered the overall top speed of all cars by adding drag. Another alteration to the cars was the introduction of an extended "pop-off" value case extension of to the base of the manifold pressure relief valve. CART chairman and CEO Joseph Heitzler said he was pleased the issue had been resolved but regretted the position it presented to its partners. "CART's position that it is our duty as a sanctioning body to provide strong leadership to our members, under the rule book, while maintaining a process enabling them to make informed decisions. Our conversations over the past three weeks have strengthened our determination in both these regards."
Practice and qualifying
There were three practice sessions preceding Sunday's race: two on Friday and one on Saturday. The first session ran for 105 minutes, the second 75 minutes, and the third 60 minutes. A half hour test for rookie drivers scheduled for mid-morning on Friday was delayed twice due to a thick fog that later lifted, and a major technical problem with the communication loop in race control preventing direct contact with teams and shortening the session to ten minutes. Alex Zanardi lapped fastest at 34.563 seconds, followed by Bruno Junqueira and Scott Dixon. In the first practice session, Bräck was fastest with a 31.809 seconds lap, with Canadians Patrick Carpentier and Alex Tagliani second and third. Roberto Moreno, Cristiano da Matta, Castroneves, Oriol Servià, Junqueira, Maurício Gugelmin, and Max Papis were in fourth to tenth. After 45 minutes, the first caution was waved for officials to inspect the track because several teams reported cut tires after examining them on pit road.
As Carpentier overtook him on the outside, Moreno lost control of his car on the exit of turn two due to turbulence removing downforce from his car. His front-left tire and Franchitti's rear-right wheel collided, sending Moreno broadside into the inside tire barrier with his car's left-front corner at approximately . The impact cracked the interior of Moreno's helmet, but a HANS device prevented him from sustaining more serious injuries and from being rendered unconscious. Moreno's car ricocheted off the wall and stopped around halfway down the back stretch. The session ended early with 17 minutes to go because of the damage to the tire barrier, which course officials repaired. Moreno was transported to the infield care center by stretcher, and was declared fit to partake in the second practice session.
Papis led the second practice session with a 31.853 seconds lap, followed by Tagliani, Bräck, Paul Tracy, Bryan Herta, Tora Takagi, Tony Kanaan, Christian Fittipaldi, Memo Gidley, and Andretti. The first caution came after seven minutes when course observers located a loose bolt in turn one's groove, since the track had been inspected and cleaned. Gugelmin's right-front tire was cut by debris on the track, prompting a second caution for a track inspection and clean-up. With a time of 31.330 seconds, Bräck led the final practice session. Second to tenth were Papis, Takagi, Tracy, and Kanaan, Michel Jourdain Jr., Herta, Shinji Nakano, Fittipaldi, and Gugelmin.
During the session, Max Wilson spun leaving turn one below the white line denoting the boundaries of the trackat approximately . The transition from a banked turn to a flat surface removed his front wing, and he struck the outside concrete barrier before stopping in the centre of turn two. Wilson was transported by helicopter to Foote Memorial Hospital, Jackson, complaining of left rib pain. Although X-ray examinations found no injuries to Wilson, his team Arciero-Blair Racing withdrew from the race because his car could not be repaired, and had no spare vehicle following a crash at the preceding week's Molson Indy Toronto. Franchitti caused the second caution after the plenum flew off his car's top, and lodged in his rear wing in turn two. He stopped at the bottom of the next corner with smoke billowing from his car. It was removed from the track by the trackside safety crew who subsequently cleaned the circuit.
Qualifying
Saturday afternoon's qualifying session was due to last two hours starting from 12:00 EDT (UTC+04:00). Plans were made to begin qualifying with the slowest driver in the weekend's combined practice sessions going out first and the quickest competitor heading out last. Rules restricted each driver to two timed laps, and the pole position winner earned one point towards the Drivers' Championship. Seven drivers ventured onto the track to set a lap time that were much slower than in practice since they were not running in the draft and the cars were carrying more craft due to the rear wing extension. This was before rain stopped all on-track activity after 28 minutes. Rain stopped for about half an hour before returning to the area. The session was officially cancelled by CART chief steward Chris Kneifel at 3:00 p.m. local time after attempts to make the track driveable again were unsuccessful. Kneifel elected to use the third practice session's lap times and not the drivers' order in the seasons' points standings to set the race's starting order. This was the second time in the 2001 season that qualifying was cancelled due to inclement weather. The decision gave Bräck his fourth pole position of the season. Due to no qualifying, he did not earn the one point for pole position. He was joined on the grid's front row by his teammate Papis. Takagi, Tracy, Kanaan, Jourdain, Herta, Nakano, Fittipaldi, and Gugelmin completed the top ten.
Qualifying classification + Qualifying results Driver Team Time 1 8 Team Rahal 31.330 229.812 — 2 7 Team Rahal 31.483 228.695 +0.153 3 5 Walker Racing 31.591 227.913 +0.261 4 26 Team Green 31.609 227.783 +0.279 5 55 Mo Nunn Racing 31.626 227.661 +0.296 6 16 Bettenhausen Racing 31.676 227.301 +0.346 7 77 Forsythe Racing 31.726 226.943 +0.396 8 52 Fernández Racing 31.752 226.757 +0.422 9 11 Newman/Haas Racing 31.766 226.657 +0.436 10 17 PacWest Racing 31.784 226.529 +0.454 11 1 Team Penske 31.789 226.493 +0.459 12 18 PacWest Racing 31.877 225.868 +0.547 13 6 Newman/Haas Racing 31.890 225.776 +0.560 14 66 Mo Nunn Racing 31.893 225.755 +0.563 15 40 Patrick Racing 31.896 225.734 +0.566 16 12 Chip Ganassi Racing 31.949 225.359 +0.619 17 20 Patrick Racing 31.950 225.352 +0.620 18 39 Team Motorola 31.976 225.169 +0.646 19 3 Team Penske 32.041 224.712 +0.711 20 51 Fernández Racing 32.170 223.811 +0.840 21 32 Forsythe Racing 32.218 223.478 +0.888 22 4 Chip Ganassi Racing 32.244 223.297 +0.914 23 22 Sigma Autosport 32.260 223.187 +0.930 24 33 Forsythe Racing 32.261 223.180 +0.931 25 27 Team Green 32.660 220.453 +1.330 WD 25 Arciero-Blair Racing No time No Speed Notes — Max Wilson was withdrawn as a result of a heavy accident during the third practice session.
Warm-up