Mexico: Tracy takes win number seven
Paul Tracy took a huge step toward winning his first CART Champ Car title by scoring a solid victory in Mexico City. The Canadian held off a strong challenge from Sebastien Bourdais to earn his seventh victory of the season, while Mario Dominguez and Michel Jourdain sent the crowd of around 200,000 home happy by claiming third and fourth places respectively
Tracy pulled out an eight second lead over Bruno Junqueira during the first two 19-lap stints of the 70-lap race, but during the pit stops on lap 38, Bourdais got past his Newman/Haas team-mate Junqueira and set off after Tracy's Player's Forsythe Lola. The Frenchman's ultimately fruitless pursuit would continue to the end.
Bourdais' cause was aided by a full course yellow on lap 41, brought out when Jimmy Vasser and Alex Taglini disputed the same piece of track in Turn 1. The restart occurred on lap 47, now with Bourdais' green-and-while Lola right on Tracy's tail.
The final round of pit stops came on lap 57. Tracy and Bourdais remained 1-2, while Dominguez used a quicker pit stop to get ahead of front row starter Tiago Monteiro. The race ran green to the finish with no changes in the order, Tracy winning by 1.78 sec over Bourdais and 3.25 sec over Dominguez. Mika Salo was fifth and Monteiro sixth.
Though Tracy was the deserving victor, Dominguez and Jourdain were the stars of the show. Dominguez started 11th and made a number of aggressive passes on the likes of Junqueira and Salo, while Jourdain was delayed by a first-turn mix-up that was triggered by Jimmy Vasser hitting Darren Manning, with Adrian Fernandez also involved. Jourdain and Team Rahal used an alternate pit stop sequence to emerge fourth, four spots ahead of Fernandez.
"Bruno had a good run on me at the start and got ahead, but I outbraked him at the first turn and I was able to pull away," Tracy said. "My car was perfect today and we were fortunate that Bruno didn't have a very good day.
"The biggest factor for me was trying to stay ahead of Sebastien," Tracy added. "He put me under quite a bit of pressure."
A total of 45 points are available in the final two rounds of the CART Champ Car World Series at Surfers Paradise and Fontana. With a 29-point deficit to Tracy, Junqueira has his work cut out, while Jourdain is the only other driver with a mathematical shot at the title. The Mexican is 43 points out.
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