The > Sports > Other Sports > Nascar Seeks Crossover Stars Across the Border

or much of his career, Michel Jourdain Jr. has followed the path of the traditional Mexican racecar driver. He drove open-wheeled, Indy-style cars. He won races. He became famous in his home country.

But then he did the unthinkable, signing a contract to drive stock cars this year.

"I'm not like a normal Mexican," he said last month at Daytona Beach, Fla.

Normal is racing anything but stock cars. Nascar, as everyone always knew, was for Americans only.

Until now. Jourdain is the new Hispanic hope, a driver born in Mexico with the talent and the pinup marketability to draw the large Hispanic population in the United States to a sport with grand plans to expand beyond its deep roots in the American South. At 28, after driving in the Champ Car series (the old CART circuit) for nine years, he has been handed a full-time ride in the Busch Series, Nascar's equivalent to Class AAA baseball.

The timing of Jourdain's entry is hardly coincidental. Nascar officials have made no secret of their global aspirations, going so far as to schedule a Busch points race in Mexico City today. (Jorge Goeters of Mexico pleased fans yesterday by winning the pole for the race, beating out Robby Gordon.)

The Telcel Motorola 200 at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with a .3 million purse that is higher than all but the Daytona Busch payout of .4 million, will feature top American and Mexican drivers.

Nascar is hoping to win fans on both sides of the border.

"From a long-range viewpoint, we have to have an international strategy for the sport," Nascar's chairman and chief executive, Brian France, said last month.

As many as 10 Mexican drivers, including Jourdain and Adrian Fernandez, a longtime open-wheel driver who is among the most popular athletes in Mexico, have been signed to entice an audience that knows little about Nascar. They will join Nextel Cup series drivers like the 1989 Cup champion Rusty Wallace, Jamie McMurray and Kevin Harvick along with the Busch Series regulars.

Jourdain and Fernandez assured their American counterparts that security would not be a concern this weekend. But amid fears of a difficult trip, Nascar officials went so far as to enlist U.P.S. to handle the massive border crossing in Laredo, Tex., for all of the haulers carrying cars and equipment to the race.

They traveled by caravan with a Mexican police escort.

As for the drivers and crews, they were placed at hotels in secure areas of the city, with Nascar providing all meals as well as transport to and from the racetrack.

"I really don't see the need for the Nascar Busch Series to go to Mexico City," the driver Kenny Wallace said in a telephone interview before traveling to Mexico. In addition to the cost of the trip, Wallace said: "I'm concerned about the safety of everybody. We've been told we should not go out on our own. If you're in a town you can't go out on your own, you do not need to be there."

But Nascar, and its car manufacturers and sponsors, all want to be there. Lowe's, the home improvement store chain with many stores in Texas, is sponsoring the Hendrick Motorsports racecar that will be driven by Fernandez.

And it was Ford that first pushed the ppc Racing team to sign Jourdain, whose car is sponsored by the Mexican cellphone company Telcel.

"Ford was interested in having a Hispanic driver as part of our diversity program within Ford Motor Company," said Greg Specht, Ford Racing's operations manager. "We're a very diverse company, and our customers represent the whole spectrum of people in the world."

Despite a lack of experience, Jourdain has allayed concerns that he would struggle to adapt to the heavier stock cars. He finished 25th in the season-opening Busch Series race at Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 19, and followed that with another 25th-place finish at Fontana, Calif., last weekend.

More important than the finish, Jourdain managed to complete every lap of each race without a wreck. That is the short-term goal.

"If I can adapt or not to a stock car, we don't know yet," Jourdain said in Daytona before his first race. "They think so.

"I mean, I don't have the experience with stock cars, but I do have the experience at the top level of motor sports. It's not like they brought me out of running in these little road courses, running at 100 miles an hour. I qualified at Fontana once at 237 miles an hour average. I won races."

Jourdain, the son of a racecar driver and savvy to the falling prospects of open-wheel racing despite its popularity in Mexico, said he had been eyeing Nascar for some time.

"The vision these guys have is just amazing," he said. "This is where people, this is where sponsors, this is where the media is."

Yet 10 years ago, a Hispanic driver like Jourdain would have gone begging for a ride in the sport. That has changed. Now Ford and Greg Pollex, the ppc car owner, may be on the verge of developing the first legitimate Hispanic star in Nascar. If Jourdain progresses as hoped, he could be driving in the Nextel Cup series within a few years.

"One thing I think is really important is to get the Hispanic population to the racetrack and to the TV set," Pollex said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "And I think everybody believes Michel Jourdain can do that.

"If he develops and has the talent at the Nextel Cup level to be competitive, I think he becomes a national hero in Mexico."

And a money machine for everyone connected to Jourdain.