Paul Position

Seems ages since I wrote for you last, but in that time there's only been one Champ Car round. Oh, and it went shit for me, so no surprise there, given the way this season's gone. So if I haven't got a whole lot to say, don't give me a hard time. That's just the way it goes at the moment.

The good news was that we were back at Road America again. Bearing in mind the last time we'd been there, two months earlier, the atmosphere was shitty because of Cristiano [da Matta]'s accident, and some of us had left straight after. But we're racing drivers, we're there to do a job, and so you have to forget that. And once you start focusing on your job, you get a real kick to be back at Elkhart again. It is a great, great track.

For our half of Forsythe Championship Racing, though, the weekend went horribly wrong, and that was dictated by the fuck-up in qualifying. In the rainy first session it was great to be quickest and then it all unravelled for us. We made really poor decisions in the qualifying session.

With the track getting dryer all the time, you needed to be on track in the last minute and with a set of dry tyres on and we weren't - and others were. And that was it - our times we just fell back to 11th. The Saturday session was slower, so that was where we got stuck.

We never really got enough dry track time to fine-tune the car's handling. We did learn enough that I was way down on top speed compared to my teammate, despite being quicker in the corners, so we put a new engine in for Sunday morning warm-up and it was better.

But like I say, by then the weekend was ruined. In the race, I used up all my push-to-pass getting into the top six. On the restart, I was fighting Oriol Servia, and he had some extra boost left, and I didn't want to give back the position, because I knew I'd never get back past him.

So I was a little too late on the brakes - maybe 20 yards or so - and a little too hard on the brakes, locked it up, and flat spotted the tyre. Well, I say flatspot, it was like the freakin' thing was square. I still made the corner, but after that it was bumping like crazy.

Dan Clarke then was able to get a run on me because I was so slow going through the Carousel and the Kink, so down into Canada corner I locked up again on the same flatspot. That's the problem: once you've flatspotted a tyre, when you load it up again as the car dives under braking, that's the place it's most likely to stop at, and it gets harder to unlock, even if you release the brake a little.

So I ended up in the gravel. We got running again and without checking it out, I don't even know where I finished - 10th? Ninth? Shit, I don't know. And if it's outside the top three, I don't honestly care.

I guess the big story of the race was what happened to Katherine Legge though. I drove through the debris, and it looked un-fucking-believable. Last time I'd seen a shunt like that was Greg Moore's at Fontana in '99, and we know the end result of that, so it was pretty scary.

Since then, I've been to Mont-Tremblant, which you may have heard is on our schedule for next year, replacement for Montreal.

I'm happy to report, it looks like it's going to be a fantastic track. They've got a lot of work to do in terms of safety. Turn 1 is mega, mega fast and with no room for error, so they're gonna have to put a fence up on the exit, because if you had an accident there and got any kind of height on it, you might go over the wall and drop 100ft into a river.

They've also got a problem with deer. A guy in a Formula Ford 2000 hit a deer and is now in a coma. But the guy who owns the track has got plenty of money, and he's desperate to have the race, so it should get done.

I was actually up at Mont-Tremblant not to check out the track though, but to help on a show for the Discovery Channel, a karting challenge. There had been 3,000 applicants, and it had been narrowed down to 16, and this was a shootout, elimination-type show, where the winner gets a season of Star Mazda paid for by the Discovery Channel and Castrol. Pretty cool.

It was a lot of work - 16-hour days - so I'm pretty sure I don't have what it takes to go into television in the long term. It was interesting getting a different perspective on the sport. But I tell you, it was pretty hard having to tell kids that they don't have what it takes to be a driver. Their eyes were welling up, they were crying...

Assen has long held the Dutch TT for motorcycles © Fortuna

So what else is new? At the time of writing this column, it isn't announced yet whether the two European races are happening next year, but I'm all for it if it does happen. I'd really look forward to that if at all possible. I think we have a pretty good fan base in Europe, and I've had some positive feedback to the Paul Position columns from German and Dutch Champ Car fans. So sure, I'll be up for an Assen/Oschersleben gig.

Speaking of Europe, I've gotta mention Michael Schumacher: I'm still questioning whether that decision to retire came from him. He's still on top of his game, he's still awesome to watch. He's had a career that I don't think anyone can ever replicate in the next 100 years.

He's just great, isn't he? There are only a couple of teams who have the financial backing to persuade him out of retirement - Renault and McLaren. But I don't think that's gonna happen. So how's he going to fill his life beyond Formula One? I don't see Michael winding up driving in Champ Cars at CTE Racing any time soon, either.

Another big story is that the No. 10 car will be running again, Ryan Briscoe driving da Matta's RuSPORT car, so it will be interesting to see how he goes. He's never raced at Surfers before, I hear, but it's not a super-difficult track to learn, so I'd expect him to go okay. He'll be under pressure on home ground, but I haven't seen many drivers respond badly to that sort of pressure. If you're a pro, you soak it up, use it to your advantage.

For ourselves, I think Forsythe should be on the pace in Australia. I've only twice qualified outside the top five in the 13 years I've raced there. I've been training like crazy the last couple of weeks, and I see no reason why we shouldn't be qualifying top four. And then... well anything can happen in that race really, it can get slightly crazy. Last year we were leading, and then the car started pissing oil.

It would be nice to believe we've used up our bad luck for 2006. I mean, if what goes around comes around, we should cream the '07 title! All I can say is that I know we can get the job done Down Under, if we can just get a single straightforward weekend. Not too much to ask, is it?

PT