Paul Position

Hello again, good to be back. It's also good we didn't restart this column earlier in the year, otherwise I'd have had to talk about the disastrous Daytona 24 Hours run, or the Houston Champ Car test, which was my worst day at a track since I think Pole Day at Indy in 2002.

So now, we've done our seven days of testing of the new DP01, and I'd say at Laguna Seca things started to look pretty positive for Forsythe Championship Racing. On the first day we turned the quickest lap. We got off to a slow start on the second day because we cooked the diffs practising our standing starts at the end of the first day. So we lost some momentum. But the car feels really good.

We've got to be cautious about getting carried away here, though, because the test days have been shakedowns rather than tuning. All three of the venues that we've tested at - Sebring, MSR Houston and Laguna Seca - are pretty irrelevant to the tracks we go to with the exception of maybe Elkhart Lake and Edmonton.

Certainly Laguna doesn't have any relevance to our opening batch of three races at Las Vegas, Long Beach and Houston streets. At Laguna, it's all high-speed corners, whereas those openers are short, tight, point-squirt kinda tracks. But it's all we have, and at least we're learning about the car from the mechanical point of view, and what the issues are going to be, so from that standpoint we're going OK.

Obviously tyres were my big issue last year, and we haven't had a chance to run the new car on the soft red compounds yet. I've been pretty happy with the tyres we've used throughout testing but we've been using the road-course tyre.

The car is a big step forward over the old one. It's so much more stable in fast corners so therefore a lot quicker, but like I say, once it's jacked up to run over a bumpy street course, and on a slower course, that difference won't be so great.

I'm happy with paddle shifts, too. You can carry more speed into the corners because you can leave your downshifting to a lot later. With how late the new generation cars are braking, I don't think you could take advantage of that if you still had a stick shift.

The launch control hasn't been so good, which is why they've delayed the introduction of standing starts, probably until the Portland race in June. But Cosworth's doing the best with the parameters they've got. It's very different from Formula One, which has fly-by-wire throttles, electronic clutches, electronic diff control and, most importantly, normally aspirated engines.

We're turbocharged, so we make a lot of revs but we don't make a lot of torque until the turbo gets some load on it. We can get off the line OK without launch control, because you can control the wheelspin with your right foot. But obviously what Champ Car is trying to achieve is every driver getting off the line without stalling. So now they're delaying the standing starts to one of the later races. Whatever, I don't care one way or the other.

So, looking at the rivals, who's going to be the strongest? Well, Sebastien Bourdais and Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing obviously. Graham Rahal has gone really well, too, but he's also proved that team is the marker for us all, in terms of the way the cars are prepared. Graham has proved he's good by being as quick as Sebastien for the most part with a very limited time in these cars. But that team is clearly very good - and it makes me question how good is Sebastien? How much is it down to the team, how much is it him?

I'm a little bit surprised to see Justin Wilson struggling. He struggled at every test with the new car. The DP01 has a lot more stability at the rear than the old car, and one of the issues he ran into last year was instability at the rear of the RuSPORT car. I'm only speculating, but he might have gotten so used to how his old car handled that he's got to unlearn how he drove. If that's the problem, though, I can't believe he won't figure it out.

Neel Jani's been very quick in testing for PKV but, again, testing can give the wrong impression. In his rookie season Sebastien was very quick in preseason tests, but when you get to your first new track and you've got to go in and learn a track in your first hour, you use up a lot of tyres and it's really hard for a rookie to shine.

Neel Jani (PKV Racing) in the Corkscrew © LAT

It's hit or miss: some weekends you'll run good, and other weekends you can be lost. On the other hand, the tracks we go to in Europe I guess Jani may know and we don't, so the circumstances can change.

Will Power's ready to be a championship contender, but I don't know if Team Australia can be so effective because they don't have a spare car at the moment. Running two entries with only two cars is tough. I think Will can win races, but if he clobbers a wall and he hasn't got a spare, well, they're gonna be in trouble. And running on so many street courses, you are going to make mistakes, there are going to be accidents, or you're going to be in a wreck with someone. That's going to be their Achilles heel compared to our team or Newman/Haas/Lanigan.

Of course one of the topics everyone's talking about at the moment is the lack of space for some of the established guys in the series - people like Bruno Junqueira and Oriol Servia. Bruno should be in a car - he's a name, he's a proven driver who we know can win races if everything comes together. And the same with Servia. These are drivers who could have gone to the IRL or done other things and they stuck with Champ Car out of loyalty and they're being left out on the streets. There seems to be no loyalty back.

However, the car count isn't what it should be and neither is the money for some of the smaller teams, so a rookie with $2m is going to be pretty appealing. The car count situation is kinda embarrassing for Champ Car because they were talking 20 or 22 cars six months ago, and now they've over-promised and under-delivered. When you come out and make a statement that you can't live up to, it doesn't go over well with the fan base.

I've never been one to say I'm going to do this or that, unless I think I can do it. Sometimes it's better to not say anything and just let it happen. Then if you get to 22 cars everyone's happy but if you make a statement that 'this is the way it's going to be' and then don't deliver, it's only natural that everyone's left disappointed.

So what have we got to do to get more teams in? I don't think increasing the purses for each race is the answer. It's what the landscape is right now. For instance, NASCAR's still going super strong right now at the Cup level, but in the Busch level, they only had 39 cars on the grid in Mexico out of 43 slots. The Busch series has plenty of money flying around there and if they're struggling to fill the grid then prize money isn't the answer.

Whatever the answer is, it isn't for Kevin [Kalkhoven] or Gerry [Forsythe] to fund any other teams. Teams have to function on their own. When a team isn't forced to stand on its own and instead the team-owner can just put his hand out and say 'I need more money otherwise I'm not going to turn up and you'll look bad', then that's what they do.

Sooner or later that has to stop and now the teams are being forced to cultivate their own sponsorship and their own driver line-up, rather than just say 'I want to run this driver so I need $3m'. They've got to make their own way. Your next-door neighbour doesn't pay your rent. If you have a Fish & Chips shop, the tandoori next door doesn't pay your bills for you, does it? Gotta make it on your own.

Yes, Tony George is making his IndyCar grids look quite full with his handouts, but there are still only two competitive teams; the rest are just circulating. That's why they added more downforce this year because they wanted to compress the advantage that Penske and Ganassi have over the rest.

The start of the 2007 IndyCar season at Homestead © LAT

They're trying to make it a restrictor-plate style race, where the teams at the back can suck up and stay with the pack and make it look more competitive. But watching the Miami race, it looks to me like the gap between Penske, Ganassi and the rest has got even bigger.

By contrast, I don't reckon we have any problem with the racing in Champ Car. The biggest gripes we have are the instability of the midfield names. We have a high turnover of drivers. I guess the one thing fans can count on is that I'm going to be here until I want to stop driving. Whether Sebastien stays after this year remains to be seen.

In Champ Car, we do have a lot of positives about the series, no question. Vegas and Phoenix are going to be big, and they're going to be fun at the opposite ends of the year. And I'm really pleased to get back into Europe but not on ovals. We're on proper tracks and they look fantastic. It seems our series is pretty popular in the Netherlands, and we've got Robert Doornbos and he seems to be going OK so far, so that will help.

I haven't got a teammate at the moment, and I'm writing this less than a fortnight before the first race, so from my perspective, it would be a real scramble to get that sorted before Vegas, especially finding the personnel. But a third chassis has arrived from Panoz, so watch this space...

Speaking of teammates, AJ Allmendinger finally got into a Nextel Cup race last weekend. He didn't last very long, and I'm not sure how many points you get for finishing 40th, but I guess it's progress. To be honest, I'm not surprised to see the kid struggling.

I think Juan Montoya has done a pretty good job: he struggled a bit in the last race, but he ended up finishing in the 20s, but the difference is he's got oval experience. AJ only drove about four ovals in his life before this season, whereas Montoya's a multiple oval race-winner so he knows what an oval car's supposed to feel like: AJ's not got that point of reference.

Besides that, Montoya's got a solid team and a solid crew in Ganassi. Red Bull Toyota is brand new, and Brian Vickers in the same team is taking AJ apart. Brian's been racing stock cars and racing ovals since he was a kid, so he's got a lot of experience and quick. He knows what he wants from the car, and he's got a really good crew chief - Greg Biffle's old guy. So all round, Vickers is much better prepared for the kind of new-team problems that are always going to occur.

That's it for now. Gotta focus on our stuff now. Season's about to start, and in my home town too... Wish me luck.

PT