LEXINGTON, Ohio (AP) Rookie CART driver Mario Dominguez still was thinking about fan relations, even after he crashed his car.

Dominguez brought out the first yellow flag of Sunday's Grand Prix of Mid-Ohio on lap 47 when he spun out, took a wild ride backward through a gravel trap and left his car buried back-end first in a tire wall.

He quickly got out of the car, crawled under a fence, saw two young boys looking at him and stopped to pose for a picture. Other fans soon surrounded him and he signed autographs and chatted before being led away for a quick look by the CART medical staff.

"It looked worse on television than it actually was," he said. "I'm not hurt physically, but it's really hard emotionally. I just lost it. I made a mistake. It's very unfortunate because the car was running really well and I think we had a pretty good shot at a top 10 finish."

NO PASSING ALLOWED?: There wasn't a competitive pass for the lead Sunday, nor has there been such a pass in a CART event since April 27, a span of eight races.

Christian Fittipaldi said the cars have become so equal it's not easy to overtake anyone.

"I think it's pretty obvious to everyone. It's not only in CART, but Formula One pretty much has the same problem nowadays," he said. "The cars are running pretty close. Downforce is a huge factor right now and the competition level, it's so tight that when you are running behind someone, it's very, very difficult to be on top of him."

DIXON MOVES UP: Scott Dixon moved up from 15th to fifth, the biggest difference between starting and finishing positions.

"We used a different pit strategy than the leaders and it worked great," he said. "The team gave me great pit stops and we were able to make up a lot of spots. The car got better as the race went on. This is my best finish of the year and we kept getting closer to winning."

PAPIS OUT EARLY: Max Papis' performance as a one-shot replacement for Adrian Fernandez ended early when he left with a drivetrain problem on the 47th lap.

Fernandez suffered a hairline hip fracture last month at Vancouver and expects to be back for next week's race at Elkhart Lake, Wis.

"We made excellent progress through the weekend and I think we were running close to the pace of the leaders," Papis said. "Unfortunately, we had a problem that took us out. It's unfortunate because I was looking forward to the second half of the race. I felt that would have been my strong part."

RAHAL STRUGGLES: Team Rahal, based in suburban Columbus, about 60 miles from the track, didn't have a good day in front of its home crowd as Jimmy Vasser finished eighth and Michel Jourdain Jr. 11th.

Vasser, who has been involved in several first-lap incidents, said he felt relieved just to finish.

"At least we made it through the first lap today and ran the whole race," he said. "We just didn't have the speed. That was all the car had today - eighth."

Jourdain extended his streak for scoring driver points to 11 races and is the only driver to score and finish in every event this season.

"At least we got some points today," he said. "It was a very long race and very tough. We just didn't qualify well and it is so hard to pass here."

Team Rahal is one of only two CART teams not based in Indianapolis. The other is Newman-Haas Racing, which has its headquarters in suburban Chicago.

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