Paul Position

So I had hoped to be able to get back to you on a positive note after Long Beach, but... well, shit happens. In fact we had more than our fair share of it over the weekend, as you probably all saw.

Honestly, we felt that we were as quick as anyone out there at Long Beach. Well, okay, probably not quick enough to beat Sebastien Bourdais to pole, but second to fourth was so tight - Justin Wilson, Bruno Junqueira and AJ Allmendinger were covered by four hundredths - I think that without the crash we had in qualifying, we would have been on the front row, definitely, instead of sixth.

But you know, even from sixth, we'd have had a podium. Watching the race, Justin was anywhere between half a second to a whole second a lap slower than Sebastien, so definitely it would have been a good result for us. We'd have been quicker than Justin, so if we'd have got through on track or in the pits, we'd have been able to hold on to second.

Instead, Sebastien's already 35 points ahead of us. I guess everyone's talking about the first corner shunt, so here it is from my perspective. I got my teammate Mario at the green flag, and when we hit the braking zone for Turn 1, I was about halfway along the inside of Junqueira, but I wasn't looking to pass. I was gonna let him turn in, and follow him through.

I was on that inside line just trying to get some air on my front wings to help get the car stopped for the corner. Then I got shoved from behind and I couldn't stop because I was up off the ground and going sideways. Mario came to me after he'd finished the race and said 'Sorry, I f****d up', so I guess it's just one of those things.

So I ended up watching the race, and whether you're standing trackside or looking at the screens, it's not hard to see where Newman/Haas have an advantage over us all. They're putting the power down so well and they ride so much nicer over the bumps than anyone else's car.

In order to get the grip we need, our Forsythe cars are very stiff on the springs, they don't ride well, and that's been the biggest complaint that Mario has; our cars are much stiffer than the cars he's driven before. It's indicative of the package that we run and the shocks that we've developed.

We're trying to sort our way through how to maintain the balance and grip level and get the car riding better without getting it all sloppy and slow to respond. We've been testing a bunch of things to try and get around that.

For now, though, we're lacking a little bit of the grip level we need to go faster to beat the RuSPORT and Newman/Haas cars on road courses like Portland. We're just a tick off, and it gets a little bit frustrating. Our car's well balanced, just not quite quick enough, and really it comes down to the shocks, that's where they have a slight advantage on us right now.

Newman/Haas use a company called Dynamic, and they actually have an engineering programme with them - data acquisition, simulation, seven-post shaker rig work, and so on. We've asked Dynamic how much we'd have to spend to get on the programme with them, and they've told us they can't because Carl Haas has made it an exclusive deal: Dynamic can't work with any other Champ Car team.

We have a programme going with Ohlins, but it's a different deal: we pay a fee, we get our shocks and a guy who comes out to a handful of races a year to see how we're doing. We do our own seven-post rig work. But Newman/Haas have their own dedicated group of guys from Dynamic and a car sitting in the Dynamic shop up in Ontario, Canada, and they're working seven days a week. I think they've had that programme going for something like six years now.

You might think given that Houston will be new to all of us that the difference between Newman/Haas and the rest of us might be equalized, but that's hard to say. Actually I'd say that new guys - people like Antonio Pizzonia - are going to be at an advantage there, or rather, less of a disadvantage.

Up to now, they've been testing or racing at circuits that a lot of us already know in terms of where the worst bumps are, where the braking points are, and so on. If we're all starting with no knowledge of the track, it's going to level it out for people like Pizzonia a lot more than from, say, me to Bourdais.

One of the few positive aspects of the Long Beach weekend is that negotiations are underway between Forsythe Racing and me for an extension to my contract, possibly by three years. We sat down with Jerry, and my manager and him are discussing it - what's gonna work for me, what's gonna work for Jerry. We've had a great relationship, and hopefully by next race we'll know what we'll be doing.

This isn't a big change of heart on my part. It's just that since I last wrote this column, there have been real positive signs from open-wheel racing. It seems like there's a lot changing, and I'm now optimistic that a reunification between Champ Car and IRL could happen. Okay, so nothing's done yet, but at least the two sides aren't at odds with each other over what it will take to get a reunion to happen.

If it does, well, I'd love the opportunity to run against all the best guys again instead of just half of them, and if it's a three-year deal I sign with Jerry, I'm confident I'll still be quick enough in three years. I keep working on it. I'm definitely not afraid to push myself to the limit and take the car past its limit. I'm not scared to stick my neck out. We only need to get the car a little bit better to be in a position to win.

It's a long break before the next race, so my plan right now is to do the Grand Am race at Laguna Seca, probably with Graydon Elliott. That's in three weeks' time, the week before our next Champ Car round in Houston.

But even before that, I may be racing a Busch car at Talladega:

one of the NASCAR teams are talking to me about that, which is pretty flattering. So these are two opportunities to keep active and keep myself racing sharp. Let's face it, to cut back Bourdais' advantage in Houston, we're going to need absolutely everything on our side.

PT

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