Intimidating and fearless, series' best-known driver just wants to race
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Paul Buker
Newhouse News Service
Portland, Ore. -- Paul Tracy, easily Champ Car's best-known driver, suffered through an incident-filled 2006 season marked by a fight with Alex Tagliani in San Jose, Calif., and a shoving match with archrival Sebas tien Bourdais in Denver after they crashed each other out of the race on the last lap.
Tracy was fined, docked points and put on probation.
He is Champ Car's bad boy, but he also is a promoter's dream.
He is always one of the top draws at the Grand Prix of Cleveland, where he has won twice.
In the off-season, Tracy rededicated himself to the series, and after dabbling in the NASCAR Busch Series, he made it clear he was not switching to stock car racing.
Tracy, 38, signed a new five-year contract with team owner Gerald Forsythe and looked forward to fighting for his second championship in 2007 in Champ Car's new Panoz DP01 car.
A rejuvenated Tracy was third in the 2007 series opener at Las Vegas behind Will Power and Robert Doornbos, but he broke a bone in his back in a practice crash the next week at Long Beach and missed the next two races.
For a driver who hasn't won since the 2005 season, it was a crushing setback.
"It all but takes us out of the championship race," Tracy said. "All we can do is win races and get as many points as we can."
When Tracy was cleared to drive in Portland on June 3, executives at ABC were happy and promoter Mike Nealy probably high-fived a few employees.
Even Bourdais, Tracy's bitter adversary, acknowledges that the Mazda Champ Car Grand Prix would have lacked a certain drama without Tracy's No. 3 Forsythe Racing car throwing its intimidating weight around Portland International Raceway.
"Makes it more difficult for me," Bourdais said, "but it definitely makes for a better show."
When Tracy was in Portland last year, he was welcoming a new teammate -- A.J. Allmendinger -- and trying to break an 0-for-14 streak at PIR.
The rambunctious Allmendinger won the race, the first victory by a U.S. driver in Portland since Al Unser Jr. in 1995, and Tracy was a disappointing seventh.
Allmendinger got hot, won five races and finished second in the Champ Car World Series behind Bourdais. Then Allmendinger jumped to the NASCAR Nextel Cup series in a staggering $9 million deal with Red Bull and Toyota, temporarily leaving Champ Car without a U.S. driver.
Now Tracy, a Canadian, is eager to get back in a race. He is 15th in points after finishing 10th at Portland following the two missed events and he admits, "chasing Bourdais down is always very difficult."
Another Tracy-Allmendinger pairing would have been a formidable challenge in 2007 for the dominating Newman/Haas/Lanigan team that features three-time defending champion Bourdais and Graham Rahal, 18, who is being asked at a very young age to be one of the series' cover boys.
Kevin Kalkhoven, one of Champ Car's majority owners, said bluntly that Allmendinger would regret going to NASCAR.
Tracy -- at one time very close to Allmendinger -- said he does not begrudge Allmendinger's taking NASCAR's millions, but Tracy wonders if he is second-guessing his decision in light of Toyota's struggles to even qualify for Nextel Cup races in its first season.
Allmendinger declined an interview request to discuss Champ Car.
Tracy said of him: "I think he's so good that down the road there would have been many more opportunities for him. If he had another highly competitive year or maybe a championship under his belt, there were more options than stock cars. I think he could have gone to Formula One [and made even more money]."
Tracy continued: "There's all this talk about Bourdais going to Red Bull [a Formula One team], but A.J. had every bit the measure of Bourdais from the halfway point of the season on."
The talk around Tracy frequently includes questions of his retirement plans, but he said his recent injury showed him that he isn't nearly ready to get out of the cockpit.
"I don't like sitting at home," he said. "It drives me crazy. I haven't put a timetable on when I want to stop. I just know I want to be in the car."
It was Allmendinger's fast lap times at Portland last year that convinced Tracy he should change driving styles and become a left-foot braker. Left-foot braking allows a driver to get back on the throttle quicker and carry more speed into the turns.
Of course, it is Tracy's right foot that occasionally gets him in hot water. Tracy has turned bumping into an art form in Champ Car, and the other drivers in the series are well aware of it.
Last year in Cleveland, in fact, Tracy was involved in an incident where he got airborne and went over top of Bourdais, knocking Bourdais out of the race.
"I think he's a good guy as a person, but not as a race car driver," said Tagliani, who nearly came to blows with Tracy in San Jose. "But I also respect him as a racecar driver because he brings intensity, he's aggressive, and he never gives up.
"I got in his face [at San Jose] and said what I had to say. I was mad, but I didn't want to fight. I didn't want to kill him. I just wanted him to admit he [messed] up."
There is no more daunting task in Champ Car than trying to pass Tracy in the heat of battle or hold him off when his car is trying to get by.
"We keep pointing to PT because he's aggressive and he has the attitude off the track that goes with it," Tagliani said. "But there are guys out there even more aggressive than Paul, making riskier moves. . . . Nobody is going to move over for him out there, but you have to evaluate the risk of trying to keep your position. How far are you willing to push the issue? Do you fight, or do you crash?"
Tracy is totally unafraid of both, which makes him the most entertaining driver in Champ Car.