If anything, just four months shy of the age of 38, the senior full-time driver on the Champ Car circuit seems to be in the full throes of a kind of anti-maturation process, banging up cars, taking crazy chances, scrapping with the competition off the track and challenging other drivers, hockey-style, to take off their helmets and fight.
Don Cherry must be looking on admiringly, while others wonder what happened to the more controlled, calculating Tracy who not so long ago was being lauded for how much he'd grown up, the key to winning his first and only title three years ago.
That guy seemed to have finally embraced the necessity of finishing races, of protecting his car, rather than fighting to win every battle on the track, taking risks that bordered on reckless, making his team owners turn prematurely grey.
What's been back on display this year, and what had Tracy under probation even before the most recent dust-up last weekend (this time, it probably wasn't his fault, except for the tough-guy histrionics afterward), is a little flash of the past, of the old Thrill from West Hill.
It's a character trait that's the biggest part of what made him great in the first place, what pushed him to the front ranks of open-wheel racing in North America -- and, some would argue, what prevented him from winning as often as he might have.
Tracy is only content when he's in front, and he'll do whatever it takes to get there -- every driver would give lip service to the same cliché, but in his case, it's demonstrably true. Obviously, those competitive fires burn as brightly for him now as they did when he first climbed into a go-kart.
And there's something to be said for not being content to simply fade away, which appears to be the fate of the most famous and lauded member of that great class of Canadians (yes, he was raised mostly in Monaco, but we can claim him nonetheless). Jacques Villeneuve surely saw his Formula One career end with a whimper this year. He hasn't won a race since 1997, hasn't really been a factor since then and, at the age of 35, it's hard to imagine him making the transition to the National Association For Stock Car Auto Racing, as has been suggested -- or that there'd be all that much demand for his services there in any case.
Quite the tumble for the first race driver ever to beat back all of those ingrained prejudices and be chosen as Canada's athlete of the year.
Greg Moore, who may well have been the most talented of the bunch, would have been 31 this year, in the prime of his career. It's hard to believe that it will be seven years this October since he died in that crash in Fontana, Calif. Alex Tagliani is 34 and Patrick Carpentier just turned 35 and may be headed for stock cars. While it's worth pointing out that 37-year-old Michael Schumacher of Germany is still very much in the hunt for this year's Formula One championship, there's no disputing that this remarkable class is coming around the final turn.
Those in the know promise there's an echo coming -- a group of young drivers who grew up watching Canadians win at Indianapolis and on the Champ Car circuit and in F1 and who were drawn to their local tracks. Those names will become familiar soon enough, and maybe they'll go so far as to be considered the next Villeneuve, the next Moore, the next Tracy, or better than any of their predecessors.
In the meantime, barring suspension, Tracy will be out there -- he's signed with Forsythe Championship Racing until 2011 -- as the battling elder statesman, shaking his fist at the kids and daring them to get by.
Just try to tell him to pull over, and slow down, and grow up. Then be prepared to duck.