Laguna Seca Jonny Kane first qualifying report

Laguna Seca, Ca. (Sept. 8th, 2000) Ulsterman Jonny Kane took to the 1.8-mile permanent road circuit of Laguna Seca for first qualifying today in the run up for Sunday's 75-mile lap race. The ninth round of the Dayton Indy Lights Championship will be the official support race to the CART FedEx Championship series.

Kane struggled all session with a severe under steer problem. They were able to make some minor changes to dial out some of the under steer but the Team KOOL Green crew have a lot of work ahead of them.

Kane managed to clock the sixth quickest time of the session on a 1:17.118 seconds. Casey Mears took the provisional pole with a time of 1:16.137 seconds. Scott Dixon was second on a lap of 1:16.410 seconds with Felipe Giaffone third (1: 16.678 seconds).

A disappointed Kane headed back to the drawing board with his engineer in order to try and find the right configuration for tomorrow's final qualifying.

JONNY KANE, #27 TEAM KOOL GREEN

"Obviously we're really struggling with the car today. Sixth place is probably better than the car actually feels. It is not doing anything that I want it to do. It just won't turn. We tried to fix that and then caused an over steer problem so that actually made it worse. We might have gone a little bit better if we hadn't changed those things before the new tyres. Even so, we are still three quarters of a second away and that is far too far. We have a lot of thinking to do. The car is just terrible at the minute. We are making little changes but we need a lot more to be anywhere close really."