Paul Position

Sorry if these columns for autosport.com aren't exactly the Prozac of auto racing journalism, but our tale of disaster continued in Champ Car rounds five and six. Like I told you last time, Portland isn't one of my best tracks. I've never won there, and only taken one pole there. Even so, I didn't expect things to go so badly that I'd finish seventh. But when I tell you it went better than Cleveland, you get the picture.

At Portland I was just struggling the whole weekend with lack of grip, which is why we ended up qualifying tenth, and in the race I was struggling with tyre wear issues, pretty much throughout.

Obviously the start caused a fair bit of controversy, because the pole-sitter ended up only fourth into the first turn, but I think Bruno [Junqueira] was playing around, brake-checking everyone, and then when the green fell, that meant he held up the whole right-hand-side of the grid, so the left lane just went flying past.

That was fine by me, as we went from tenth to fifth, and thereafter that first stint went okay. But I'd used a lot of fuel to get up to third place by the end of that stint, so I paid the price in the pitstops. Everyone else went further on a tank of gas, and I gave up a lot of the places I'd gained.

The second stint was fairly average, and then I had one good stint, the third one, where I was able to be somewhat competitive and chase back towards the group in front of me - Sebastien Bourdais, Junqueira and Cristiano da Matta.

Then, in the last stint, I went back on to the red [soft] tyres and they were shot in 10 laps, and I was struggling badly the whole time. I had six or seven seconds over Dan Clarke, but he chased me down pretty easily and in the end I was just hanging on for dear life, and he got past me in the final lap.

I was just sliding all through the fast chicane at the back of the circuit, and losing momentum, so Clarke was able to get a good run on me coming on to the pit straight, and I had nothing left to hold him back.

My car was pretty much the same as that of my new teammate AJ Allmendinger, who won the race. The only major difference is the weight distribution: he's obviously a lot lighter than me, so he can balance it out more easily with having ballast put towards the rear of the car. I have to have my car as light as it can be. But there's not a whole lot I can do about it, so good on AJ, he drove a hell of a race.

I had reasonably high hopes for Cleveland, based on the fact that I took pole and victory there last year, and sure enough, we were on the pace from the word go. However, the red tyres seemed to screw me and AJ up on the Friday. It threw our balance out, whereas Newman/Haas did the right thing: Bourdais stayed on blacks, went faster and bagged the guaranteed front row spot. I don't know if we'd have beaten him if we'd stayed on blacks too, but we'd have had a better shot at it, for sure.

And then on Saturday, a mistake on my part in the 10-minute pre-qualifying period really screwed us up because I crashed my primary car that had all the good stuff on it. I was as fast as anyone all weekend, but now we had to switch to the spare car and that wasn't the same. As you may have seen, I struggled even to put a lap together, just over-driving it trying to get something out of it that wasn't there.

Thankfully, our Friday pace was such that I was able to still be on the third row, just about within attacking distance at the start, or so I thought.

Back in the old days, it used to be only me who used to go like a freakin' nutcase at the start of a race and make up a whole load of positions. But these days it seems like the whole top 10 are going like maniacs.

As we came up to the corner, I was just turning in and looked in my mirror and Junqueira completely dive-bombed me at the apex and bounced into the side of my car. As we exit, we're both pushing the power-to-pass button, and Bruno was pushing me to the left. Up ahead, Bourdais had had his own trouble, put two wheels in the dirt and came back onto the circuit, and was starting to go right to protect his position. Next thing I know, I'm in the middle and interlocking wheels with both the Newman/Haas cars.

Paul Tracy pits for repairs after his first lap tangle at Cleveland © LAT

I haven't seen any real decent footage of it yet, but from what I have seen, Sebastien was just following the natural curve of the track, taking the racing line, and I think Bruno moved a little bit more over to the left and that just shot me instantly up in the air. I was in a situation where, if I had hit the brakes to duck out, I'd have launched both of them over my front wheels. I don't think you can put the blame on anyone: it was just three things happening at once.

The car was damaged pretty badly right off the bat, although I have to say, I was surprised it was still going. To be that high, up in the air, crash down and still continue to run was pretty amazing. Believe me, I've had a lot smaller incidents than that and not been able to continue.

So we went back to the pits, one wheel didn't have a tyre on it, and another one had a flat spot, but of course the pits were officially closed, so you get put to the back of the field for the restart if you do that, but we had no choice. So when the caution period dragged on, since we had nothing to lose, me and AJ - who'd had his own incident - both pitted again for a fuel top-up, and then rushed round to get to the back of the queue.

My crew got me out ahead of AJ, so at the restart I had a clear run at the pack, and we made good progress, got past a bunch of cars, but as the heat got into the tyres, we just lost a lot of grip.

There had been more damage than I thought: about a third of the underwing was broken off when we were on top of Sebastien's car, the suspension was bent, wheels were toeing-out, front and rear, and inconsistently with each other, the car wasn't driving straight, the steering wheel was all cock-eyed, and so we were just burning those tyres off. We got up behind Jan Heylen, but couldn't really gain. I had nothing for him.

Still, we got up to fourth but then got hit again by Nicky Pastorelli, and after that our car was really handling bad. I could hardly get it to turn or stop. And I got down to Turn 8, and it wouldn't do either and we went into the wall. Another race from hell.

I've heard people say that I'm making more mistakes because having someone of AJ's speed in the team putting me under more pressure. That's crap. I've driven my whole career with quick teammates - people like Al Junior, Michael Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi, Danny Sullivan, Dario.... So it's not like I've never had competition within a team! It's not like another quick guy turning up will all of a sudden turn me upside down. But I've just had two shitty weekends, and people are writing me off, which is fairly silly.

I'm actually pleased I have a really fast teammate again, and in terms of the performance of the team, I reckon we've come up a little bit. But it's been two slightly chaotic races, and we'll never know how fast Sebastien was gonna be in either of them because he got screwed at the start of both.

So it would be a little optimistic to say that we've got Newman/Haas handled or that we've got it all figured out. I'd say we've got the car a little bit better, but from here to the rest of the season is when we'll really find out. By the time you read this, I'll have tested at a private test-track at Joliet in Chicago, trying out some development parts we've made for the car that we think are going to make us some progress.

Paul Tracy, Forsythe Championship Racing © LAT

Obviously I'm not a factor in the Champ Car championship anymore. As far as this year's title is concerned, from 11th in the standings, we're not even close enough to blow it a kiss goodbye. It's not the same for AJ: after two wins, he's in a position right now where he can win the championship if he has a couple more good races and Sebastien has another hiccup. We'll have to see how it all plays out. If I had to help him in the championship, sure I'd help.

In the mean time, though, I think the only way for me to carry on this year is to stay relaxed, attack each race as it comes and go for the individual wins. So far this year, I've been trying to think that we need to get through the first corner and get some points, and we've failed to do that in 50 per cent of the races.

As you can imagine, then, it was nice to do a couple of races last week where the destiny of the championship and all the crap that goes along with it has no relevance to me.

Last Friday, I did the NASCAR Busch Race for Frank Cicci at Daytona, and I qualified 35th, right behind Tony Stewart and Jamie McMurray, and I just latched on to their bumpers and got up into the top 20 before the first pitstops. It was a really spread out race because there were no yellows for the first three-quarters of the race, so our first pitstop was under green. Anyway, the car fell off the jack and the jack got stuck under the car and we lost a lap.

When later on we did get a yellow, I was towards the front of the line, and there were six or eight cars a lap down and I was at the front, trying to hold my position. But a crash happened beside me, on the outside, someone hit me, sent me into the grass. And while I was sitting there, another car hit me in the side. We pitted and fixed the damage, but by the time a red flag stopped the race, we were 28th.

The GrandAm race the night before was halfway decent, though. I was driving for Michael Shank Racing, sharing with Tommy Constantine and Mike Borkowski. And apart from a yellow at the beginning, it ran green throughout.

Mike made a good start, made quite a few positions but used a lot of fuel to get past guys, and so we had to pit four laps before the cars in front of us. By the time I got in the car, we were 12 seconds behind Alex Gurney and I couldn't close the gap: I got it down to about nine seconds, but the top six cars were running about the same pace so that was that.

But, you know, it was a good race. We got sixth, and I'm hoping from the fitness point of view that it was a good workout for this weekend in Toronto. I was in a closed car, wearing the full racesuit; it was 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 100 per cent humidity.

More relevant to Toronto, though, is that Forsythe had a real good test at a little track down at Joliet last week. We tried out some new suspension bits, and we reconfirmed the effectiveness of some of the aero bits that we've been running in the wind tunnel but hadn't had a chance to test in controlled conditions on track. Then AJ took over the testing duties the next day and reconfirmed some of the stuff that we did and had the same feedback as I had.

So it's looking more positive, definitely, and hopefully that will be reflected in our performance this weekend in front of my Canadian compatriots in Toronto. Other than that, though, no predictions. The way things are going right now, if we try and forecast what we're gonna do, it seems to turn round and bite us on the ass.

PT