Adrian Fernandez is on a roll

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- It sometimes is amazing what a win can do for a driver's confidence.

Adrian Fernandez, coming off his fourth career CART FedEx Championship Series win last weekend in Japan, is full of confidence as he heads into Sunday's Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach.

Not even a switch to the Swift chassis after running Reynards in the first two races has dampened Fernandez's enthusiasm this week.

"You know, it's not the ideal circumstances, but this is what we have and we just have to do the best with it," Fernandez said of the chassis change for this weekend's 1.85-mile street course.

"I'm pretty confident," the 33-year-old Mexican native said. "To be honest, this year I feel very confident. There were some things I needed to work on as a driver from last year in terms of preparation, my physical conditioning, restarts -- things like that.

"In these first two races, everything that I wanted to change has proved to be better than last year."

Fernandez opened the season with a 20th-place finish, but was running in fourth place when an oil leak late in the race sidelined him for the day. Fernandez rebounded with a dominating performance last weekend at the Twin Ring Motegi oval, leading 153 of the 201 laps, including the final 149.

Although the Long Beach race is the first street course on the CART schedule after two oval races, Fernandez said he feels he can carry the momentum from his Motegi win to the oceanside circuit.

"Coming into Long Beach, into a road course, it shouldn't effect (our momentum) at all," he said. "You know, we should be very strong again. I feel that (win) brings good momentum to the whole team in terms of confidence. We're all very pumped up after this win and hopefully we can carry that through Long Beach and through the rest of the season.

"We have a new chassis (but) we're having a lot of hopes that this will be a good car and it will work well in the conditions."

Fernandez and Patrick Racing had planned to campaign the Swift this year. But when off-season testing did not progress as quickly as the team had planned, team general manager Jim McGee made the decision to run the Reynard in the first two races.

"We tested the Swift in its new configuration out in Nazareth (Pa.) before Japan and we felt that had made considerable improvement to the car," McGee said. "In our January preseason testing with the Swift, prior to the improvements, we were pleased with the road course results."

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