CART success pushes Hearn to work harder

Richie Hearn had just returned to Henderson following a career-best seventh-place finish last Sunday in the CART FedEx Championship Series Rio 400 and had every reason to be in a festive mood.

Instead, the frustration was evident in the 27-year-old's voice as he talked about the first five rounds of the CART season -- which has included back-to-back top-10 finishes in Nazareth, Pa., and Rio de Janeiro.

"The finishing has been good but we need to still work on practice and qualifying -- we've been struggling in that sense -- but it has been getting a little bit better each race," Hearn said of his Della Penna Motorsports Budweiser Swift/Ford Cosworth.

The root of Hearn's frustration stems from the fact Della Penna is operating on a shoestring budget because it did not receive a full sponsorship package from Budweiser. As a result, the team has not been able to test as much as the competition.

"A lot of the problems we've had -- and we've had problems every single race -- are just stuff that you would really work out in testing and we've (tested) less than 10 days this year," Hearn said. "Our budget is pretty small so we don't have the resources or the money to do it and it shows up on race weekend, little things happen."

Actually, some pretty big things happened to Hearn and his team last weekend in Brazil. His primary car caught fire during Friday's test session and his backup machine developed an engine leak, limiting him to only nine laps of practice on the Emerson Fittipaldi Speedway.

On Saturday, Hearn spun out during qualifying and had to start dead last in the 28-car field for Sunday's 133-lap race. Hearn charged to the front of the pack and actually led the race for four laps before settling for a seventh-place finish.

It marked the first time Hearn had led a lap since last September in the 1997 season-ending event at California Speedway and doubled his previous career total of laps led in the CART series.

"I was leading for a couple of laps, so that was good for (the team)," Hearn said. "But it ended up all right -- you forget those problems when you have a good finish.

"Hopefully, this finish will get everybody kind of in gear and we can keep progressing. We need to start qualifying better; we've always had a good race car and we've had good races every race. You've just got to keep trying and I just keep doing my best. The car is good, we know that ... and it'll come around."

Despite his back-to-back top-10 showings, Hearn is not what you would call overly optimistic heading into the next race, the Motorola 300 on May 23 at Gateway Speedway near St. Louis.

"I'm actually thinking that St. Louis is going to be the toughest race all year because they changed our aerodynamic package for that race," Hearn said of the 1.27-mile oval. "Instead of running the short-oval wings, they're making us run the superspeedway wings, which I don't really think is right.

"Also, the track is pretty bumpy and it's going to be really tough, I think. The car is going to be a lot slower there -- the passing will be better, probably, but it's going to be a tough track."

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