Changing horses just for fun

It's not exactly a test session. At least not one that will help Jeff Gordon August 3 in the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. But Gordon makes the most of his lap time in a machine that sounds more like an F-14 than a racecar.

That machine belongs to Juan Pablo Montoya.

Gordon and Montoya are in Indianapolis on this day in June for an extraordinary sort of motorsports swap meet. A four-time Winston Cup champion, Gordon is living a dream by getting behind the wheel--a $40,000 steering wheel--of a multimillion-dollar Formula One car.

Montoya, the CART champion in 1999 and Indianapolis 500 winner in 2000, hasn't driven a closed cockpit car since 1994. Now he must muscle a car nearly three times the weight of the FW24 BMW he drives for Frank Williams and BMW in Formula One. He is quite lain[liar with Indy's 2.606-mile road course, where the test is held.

Gordon's greatest fear is crashing the BMW. But he has prepared by practicing with a PlayStation F1 video game over the weekend and by taking laps in the No. 24 Monte Carlo to familiarize himself with brake and turn points on the road course.

"He's probably braking at the 50-meter mark, where I'm braking at the 250 mark," Gordon says. "There's a huge difference there."

Both drivers run baseline laps in their own cars. Montoya's lap in the BMW: 1:15.2 minutes. Gordon's lap in the Chevrolet: 1:38.7 minutes. Next, the drivers swap cars. After each runs a practice lap, the teams make adjustments, and the drivers return to the track for three warm-up laps.

Montoya must familiarize himself with the clutch, brakes and the position of the steering wheel. Gordon must contend with traction control, an automatic transmission and an aluminum V10 BMW engine that produces 150 additional horsepower (900 total) and turns more than twice the revolutions per minute (19,000) of his cast-iron SB2 Chevrolet V8.

"The biggest challenge is the speed of the corner coming up at you," Gordon says. "You drive so deep into the corner because the car brakes so good. You have to be so prepared to slam on the brakes, get the car into the right gear and downshift it and be ready to turn and go.

"When you get ready to turn and you're standing on the gas, the way it accelerates and the traction control and all that is unreal. The car stops, turns and then shoots into the next corner, and you better be prepared for what it's ready to do or you're going right off the track."

Despite a trip through the grass, Gordon puts up impressive times; his best lap is just 1.3 seconds off Montoya's baseline pace. Montoya misses Turn 1 on one of his laps, but his best lap is within 1.1 seconds of Gordon's baseline time.

"When you go into the corner, you don't know how deep the car is going to go," Montoya says. "With the F1 car, there's so much grip that you're at your limit. Here, the car is the limit, and you're always trying to get more out of the car. It's really quite a bit of fun."

Gordon, letting out a scream of exhilaration and clapping as he enters the garage, is the most excited and fulfilled that Robbie Loomis, his crew chief, has seen. "I didn't hit anything, and I pushed the car as hard as l wanted to and felt what it had to offer," Gordon says.

The exhibition accomplishes another purpose, whetting the American race fan's appetite for Formula One. Indianapolis is the site of the United States Grand Prix on September 28.

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