de Ferran Wons de Beach
                          By Jim DeFord
	    (C) 1996 Trackside Internet Publishing, Inc.
		    http:/www.trackside.com/

Gil de Ferran grabbed his first pole of the 1996 PPG Indy Car World
Series today at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach with a record lap
time of: 52.208 seconds, and 109.639 mph.

"Normally your time on your first set of tires doesn't hold up," said
de Ferran. "I knew I had to go out on my second set of tires and then
Robby's engine blew and that was that."

The Goodyear Tire Company brought a new "option" compound to Long
Beach and it has paid off with Goodyear's first pole of the year. But,
the reliability of a new compound might make the difference on Sunday
afternoon.

With yet another Honda on the pole, let us look back at the next four
drivers:

Alex Zanardi is on the outside of the front row in the
Target/Honda/Firestone machine.

"I think I could've gotten (de Ferran's) time for sure," said Zanardi,
"but whether some of the others could have beaten it too, I don't know.
I set the time on my first set of tires and it wasn't that good of a
time. So we stopped and made a change that improved the car and I went
back out on used tires and set a good time. Then we stopped and made
another change that didn't improve the car, so we stopped and went back
to the early set-up and had just put our second set of tires on when
Robby blew up."

Vasser is third in yet another Honda/Firestone-shod effort, but again
was subject to Gordon frying his engine in a big way.

"I was right behind Robby when his engine blew," said Vasser. "I went
straight into the pits, because I knew they were going to throw the red
flag...but they didn't. Maybe the track got a little bit better right
at the end of the session, but I don't think we could've improved our
time."

Paul Tracy qualified fourth, five positions ahead of fellow
Penske/Mercedes driver, Al Unser Jr., with the best performance in a
qualifying session for any Ilmor/Mercedes to date.

Yet again, the fastest Ford/Cosworth driver is Scott Pruett, who will
start fifth, in the third row at the race on Sunday.

The first seventeen qualifiers are all within a second of one another.
That equals major competition! Most drivers were confident they could
have improved their times and starting positions.

Robby Gordon's engine failure put a huge damper on Saturday's session,
and the Firestone teams are confident of their potential on Sunday.

"We can run laps at 53 seconds all day long," said Patrick
Racing/Firestone shod - team manager, Steve Newey.

"Obviously I would have liked to qualify first," said Greg Moore.
"There's the prestige of getting the pole and the benefit of not having
traffic ahead of you at the start. But I think some of the guys just
held their breath for one or two laps to get those times. We can do our
times consistently."