Paul Position

OK, OK, I know I haven't done a column for a while but what did you guys and girls want to read about? Really, there are only so many ways to say "we sucked".

If you're a Champ Car fan you'll be well aware that at Forsythe Championship Racing, we spent the summer pissing in the dark on set-up. What we didn't realise until just before Zolder - our 11th round - is that we've been pissing both in the dark and into the wind. Not a pretty picture.

We were way out on the basics. In fact, things have been so bad, I can't be bothered boring you with all the details race-by-race in this column.

Toronto I don't even remember, but assume it was disaster. Edmonton - not good until race day, but then myself and Oriol Servia carved through from the back of the pack and finished fifth and sixth.

We ran OK at San Jose but ran out of gas on track. Elkhart Lake - general lack of everything I needed to make a car go fast. Huge understeer on entry, snap oversteer exit, and no grip.

And that was the crisis point as far as I'm concerned. Completely fucking awful. And that's when Tom Brown came on board as Technical Director. PKV Racing let him go all of a sudden, and he seems to be exactly what we needed. With him on board, things started taking an upswing for us.

Although we started the year OK - front-row car in Vegas and a podium finish - it then somehow all unravelled. We lost our way big time in the middle of the season just through not having the basic set-up right.

We had it running like an old Lola - nose-up, tail-down - and it needs to be the other way round on the DP01. Once Tom arrived, that was the first thing he corrected. He has a better understanding of the car, and now we're going in the right direction.

So in the European races, in terms of competitiveness, we started looking quite quick again, even if the results don't reflect it. We didn't put it together in some of the qualifying sessions, but generally our pace was much better.

We've a least got a direction on where we need to be now. I see good things happening, and about freakin' time!

The trip to Europe didn't start well, I have to say. Some of the Forsythe crew guys lost their luggage at the airport. My gearbox guy got really bent out of shape on that one and decided he wouldn't turn up to work if he didn't have his clothes, so he got fired. So I had no gearbox/rear-end guy at Zolder.

We qualified pretty well there - we were close to everyone except Bourdais and Power - and the car was getting better, but in the race it turned to crap again.

The diff went out of adjustment, lost a tooth - and we had major wheelspin on the inside wheel. I mean, I was having 100 yards of single-wheel wheelspin out of the corners, and that's not good for handling, for tyres, or for fuel economy. It was a nightmare.

At Assen we had gearbox problems in practice, and then I wiped off the front wing attacking the kerbs in qualifying and bent the front suspension.

On the one flyer I managed to get in, Bruno Junqueira came out of the same sand-trap I'd just been in and dragged crap all over the track, so I ended up starting last. Then in the race we lost gearbox oil pressure straight away, which put us out. By then we'd already had a collision at the first turn anyway.

However, all that to one side, seriously, the European races I hope have started an upswing.

Oriol Servia and Paul Tracy © LAT

One of the sad things since then is that we've lost Oriol Servia, or I should say, he's been let go. Right from the get-go of his deal, I think it was made pretty clear that this might happen. It was a race-by-race gig, and we need a Mexican driver for the Mexico City race.

When enough money arrived to run David Martinez for a second race - for Surfers Paradise - it was the obvious route to go to get him some experience in the DP01 before he goes to Mexico.

But I have to say it's sad: Oriol's done a really good job for us, he's been a really good teammate and he's also been useful.

He is probably the closest teammate I've had in my career in terms of what we want and need from a car. You could take his debrief sheet after each session, breaking the circuit down corner by corner and saying what the car's doing and it's amazing - like a carbon copy of mine, word for word.

That's been good for the team, good for our programme and helpful to Tom.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of what's been happening at the team, and what's gonna happen over the next couple of months. A lot of things which we can't really go into - or personnel changes that won't mean a whole lot to you - have been happening within the last couple of weeks at Forsythe. I phone for updates from Neil [Micklewright, team VPO] two or three times a day.

And the mood within Forsythe is good. Apparently at the Chicagoland IndyCar race, there was some bullshit going around that Jerry Forsythe was going out of business, or shutting the team down, and so on.

But when I spoke to Neil, he said that Jerry has told him that we're committed to two cars for next year and we're revamping the whole team. I don't know who my teammate next year's going to be, but I know we're in talks with a couple of drivers.

I don't know who's going to be engineering which car and that kinda thing but Neil and Tom will make those kinda decisions. But apparently the team line-up will look very different next year.

We're testing at Sebring next week - I think I've only got 40 or 60 miles of my allocation left to use up, but Martinez is going to be there. And actually, they've asked Servia if he wants to test because he's got some miles to use up. I don't know whether he'd want to do that, though - I don't think he's at his happiest right now.

Speaking of teammates, I'm very pleased for my old teammate Dario Franchitti that he won the IndyCar title. I was impressed with the fuel economy he got compared to the Penske and Ganassi cars while going so quick.

Scott Dixon seemed to have the measure of him all day, and then ran out of gas 300 metres from the line. I can't imagine how Scott feels - that's gotta hurt! So you got two polar opposites of emotions that day.

Dario Franchitti © LAT

I guess in some ways it worked out well for the IRL, in that being the Indy winner and married to a Hollywood star, Dario was the higher profile of the two championship contenders. Problem is, now it looks like they're losing him to NASCAR. Well ... possibly.

I find it really hard to believe someone - especially a smart guy like Chip Ganassi - would give Dario a Nextel Cup deal without him driving one of those types of cars yet. Or is all this talk and rumour just Dario's management getting some leverage against Andretti Green Racing?

Dan Wheldon, who is already with Ganassi and wanted to go to NASCAR, got turned down by Chip ... I don't know, there's something that doesn't add up here at all.

And then there's the money. The amount I've heard that's being thrown around just isn't believable. There's a report that Sterling Marlin, a two-time Daytona 500 winner, is suing for a year's salary of $1.2m.

That's a guy who you know you can put in your car and he's going to qualify every week, he's going to run in the middle of the pack and finish races and he's not going to wreck. He's got a name, he's got prestige among NASCAR fans and he's only worth a 1.2 mill.

Dario means nothing to NASCAR fans, so how can he be worth the multi-million numbers that are being talked about? Like I say, there are parts of the picture we're just not seeing at the moment. It'll be interesting to see how it all shakes out.

With Sam Hornish and potentially Dario leaving, that's half of IndyCar's star-power going, and their the two previous champions. So that's not good. It would be great for Champ Car to captialise, if they play it right, to make some headway. It remains to be seen whether they can do this, though. We're juggling a lot of balls at the moment, and we keep dropping them.

I flew back from Assen to LA with Kevin Kalkhoven, and I got to talking about my situation and my career. And I told him - as I've told Jerry - I've had opportunities to go to NASCAR and try out other things but I decided I wanted to finish my career with Champ Car.

Right now the series is on rocky ground but I'm gonna be loyal, and I'm not looking around. I'm happy with the amount of money I make, and though I'm not happy with how we're running right now, that's something we can work on.

And I told Kevin that Champ Car can use me as a utility to promote the series and I'm committed to try and see it through. Right now, everyone else in open wheel racing in the States seems to be looking around - be it Justin Wilson or Robert Doornbos or Dario - their eyes set on something else. I've been through the best and been through the worst and I'm committed to Champ Car.

Hand on heart, I'm not jealous of the opportunities being thrown Hornish and Franchitti's way. I went and did 10 races Busch races, and once I got down there and started doing it I just wasn't so intrigued.

Granted, I wasn't in a great car so it was a struggle running round in the pack - I'm sure it's more fun running at the front - but that is so much commitment. Forty race weekends a year is too much for me.

Paul Tracy at speed in Assen © LAT

I'm really happy with the amount of racing I do, the amount of time I get for myself, for my family. Five years ago, I'd probably have done it. But right now, at this stage in my life, I don't have the motivation to be racing every freaking weekend from March to November.

Plus, I enjoy the type of car that I drive. OK, I don't like the way it's been handling recently, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel and we're getting to where we need to be for next year. That's a positive. The bummer is that because we were so out to lunch for so long, it's like the other teams have a season's head start on us.

It's a real pain in the ass that Phoenix has been canned. Aside from the basics of making us look like assholes, and having it ruin the championship battle, it's also a circuit where Forsythe could have gone OK, I think.

And it certainly didn't help with my sponsor, Monster energy drink. That's a big market for them, and we were basing a sponsorship package to start at that race - and I mean a good deal where maybe we'd have a car sponsored by them.

Then they read on the internet that Phoenix is cancelled, which knocked everything into a tailspin. So that's pushed things into a little bit of doubt. But they've told me they're gonna evaluate where they want to be, and as we haven't seen a 2008 schedule yet, Monster aren't ready to commit to anything yet.

They've committed to me, no problem; as long as I'm driving they'll have a personal deal with me. That's good, and it puts money in my pocket. But wouldn't it be cool if we could attract them to sponsor the car and in that way support the series? The business model of Champ Car needs to get to where companies like Monster are convinced by it.

So, just two races left. And one of them is Surfers, which statistically has been good for me. I've only twice qualified outside the top five in the 14 years I've raced there.

And with the test next week, plus going on a shaker-rig, doing diff work and going through a whole load of areas on the car that we haven't even touched yet. I'm feeling pretty pumped. I think you'll see progress.

If we can just round out a disappointing season with a couple of podiums, that would be the perfect way to send ourselves into the off-season with a bit of momentum.

Hey, momentum! That's that phenomenon we haven't had since the first half of 2005, and I wanna feel it, not just remember it.

Get back to you after Mexico.

PT