Paul Position

I'm not much of a fortune teller, but near the end of my last column I said:

"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."

Well, for once my predictions came true. Forsythe Championship Racing did have a successful test, the team did do a good job at the shaker-rig, and we did make some pretty obvious progress in the last couple of races.

OK, so the results don't show it (how many times have I said that in the last couple of seasons of doing this column?), but stats are lying here.

It was gonna take a miracle to boost us into the top ten in the points in just those last two races, and miracles have been pretty hard to come by for us in 2007. So it's better to just take the positives.

I went to Surfers Paradise pretty upbeat. I think I've only qualified outside the top six there once, maybe twice, in 16 years, and one of those years was when I won! So it's a pretty good circuit for us.

The first thing I noticed this year was that the lower kerbs didn't make much of a difference. The kerbs have changed a lot throughout the years, but it's still Surfers - a great track, a great event and in a great part of the world.

The car's gotta work good too, though - it's gotta go over kerbs well, but then get the tyre firmly back on the road quick as possible for maximum grip at the front and maximum traction at the rear. And that's where the work that Tom [Brown] and the engineers did at the shaker rig and the stuff we'd tried at Sebring started to pay off.

We started to prove ourselves reasonably competitive on Friday, but my old teammate Oriol Servia (he had replaced Tristan Gommendy at PKV Racing) nipped provisional pole from Will Power and banked the guaranteed front-row slot.

That was a bummer because then on Saturday it was only Power's Team Australia car that beat us - if he'd have been fastest both days, we'd have started on the front row (which would have a major bearing on our race, unfortunately).

That's how good Saturday was for us - we got the second fastest qualifying time for the weekend. It was a good feeling for me, but it boosted the team too - their hard work in the previous weeks was paying off and we were heading in the right direction.

Not being quick enough on Friday cost us at the start though. I made a good start, drew alongside Servia and was ahead of him getting onto the brakes down at Turn 1. But then he just dived in from the outside and turned like I wasn't there so he was virtually on top of me and we touched.

He then decided to go straight at that point, squeezing me up on top of the kerb, and all I was trying to do was avoid us getting interlocked wheels.

So I ended up spinning - at which point he bailed out and went straight across the chicane. It was all a bit over-optimistic on his part. I mean, if he's gonna brake that late and blow the chicane, why not just do that and not put the guy beside him in jeopardy?

Bruno Junqueira stalling on the grid kinda helped though, because it meant a full course caution, so although I had spun to the back, I was able to catch up to the back of the pack before the restart.

Paul Tracy at Surfers Paradise, Australia © LAT

Obviously from that moment we had to play with the strategy a little bit. For example, we didn't pit under the first yellow (around lap 10) like a lot of guys did, which considering what happened with my new teammate David Martinez and Power, may have been a good thing.

Pace-wise we were pretty good from then on, but we needed to decide whether we were gonna save fuel, or go for it. And I guess we were back and forth on that one.

We were going to need one more lap of yellow to make it to the chequer, and it never came for us. So unfortunately we came up a lap short on fuel mileage, so I had to give up third on the last lap and dive for the pits, out of gas to top up.

Now in a season like this, you'd think I'd get pretty pissed about losing a podium finish. But in all honesty, I wasn't. Sure it was a bummer to just hand over a decent finish like that, but I was still high on the fact that our car was so much closer to the front than before.

If you can say you were quick enough to climb from the back of the field and get into the top three, we have to take that as a positive weekend - the team did a good job, the pitstops were good.

Anyway, at least the mood changed in the team, so we went to Mexico upbeat, but a little bit more cautious. Road courses this year had been tougher for us than street courses. I think Tom said it on this website, although a lot of our recent changes had affected the cars in a positive way right across the board, we're coming from further back on the man-made circuits.

Sure enough, we weren't so hot in Mexico and ended up qualifying eighth - not exactly where we wanted to be. But on the other hand that field was tight - fourth to eighth on the grid was covered by about 0.3s.

So we were in the ballpark to be a podium contender again. I made a great start off the line, Rahal was slow, Servia stalled and somehow I managed to get between them and we grabbed fifth.

Then Doornbos had his mechanical issue, and so in the early stages we ran fourth in a chain with Power, Sebastien Bourdais and Justin Wilson, and I'm sure we were getting pretty similar fuel mileage as them, which is a good sign.

For the rest of the race, we had a pretty good, solid run, bouncing around between fourth, fifth, sixth. Our only real problem was tyres, because in the middle of our stint we were getting oversteer, and certainly the black compound wasn't good for us.

If you watched the race on TV, you might have seen at one point my teammate Martinez - who I have to say did a pretty good job for us again - suddenly gained about two seconds on me.

Forsythe teammate David Martinez in Mexico City © LAT

Well, that was because I had a big oversteer moment at the last corner, Peraltada. I was on full opposite lock, just watching this Tecate sign getting larger and larger in my visor, and I came out of the corner using that little strip of grass between the track and the wall.

I got the impression the tyres' behaviour was very dependent on set-up. For example, I had oversteer on both compounds, but Wilson told me that on the RuSPORT car the option compound [reds] were good but when he switched to blacks he had major understeer. So the complete opposite of us - we were cooking the rears too quickly.

So we've still got some stuff to learn about this DP01, but we ended up finishing fifth which was good. If you think I've lowered my standards to be okay with a fifth, just remember where we were at on other road courses this year (Portland and Road America come to mind, though I wish they wouldn't) and you can only conclude the same as me - we've made real progress in the last part of the season.

What we need to work on is to make our car more consistent with its tyre usage. We have to get up to speed quicker but then maintain the grip in the tyre for longer than we've been able to do.

Well, this is my final column of the year, so I should look back ... but to be honest, I don't want to. 2007 was not good if you take it overall. We started off well enough, ended kinda okay, and in the middle we got that Cleveland win.

But the Long Beach injury really knocked us all sideways. Looking back on it now, if I'm brutally honest with myself, the middle third of the season I was still in a little bit of pain, not 100 percent, and so I supposed you'd say I rushed back a little too quick.

So I've now had two very different seasons - neither of them too impressive - with two very different cars. In '06 we were competitive almost everywhere but we didn't get a win. This year we had a lot of problems but did get a victory. I'd say on balance this year was more frustrating than last - we came into '07 with such big hopes.

2008 can be much, much better, I'm sure of that. And I'm sure we're going to reach Sebring with folders full of information and data, and set-ups to try out.

Champ Car are keeping the restrictions on testing pretty damn tight, so there'll be a hell of a lot of work to get through, but we're going to be motivated - I might even use the word 'desperate' - to prove again that we are a top team and that 2007 was just a one-year hiatus.

If you're expecting me to say who my teammate is gonna be, you're asking the wrong man. As I'm writing this, I have no idea whatsoever.

Jerry Forsythe's new partnership with Dan Pettit means lots of people are expecting Justin Wilson to come over, now that RuSPORT's shutting down. But I know Justin - and I guess almost every other driver without a ride - is gunning for Bourdais' old seat at Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing.

Justin Wilson © LAT

It will be interesting to see what happens if Justin gets the N/H/L seat. Sebastien was obviously an exceptional driver, so will someone else be able to get in that car and do what he did?

If Justin gets six or seven victories, it will be a good demonstration of how great that team is. If he wins only two or three, does that mean Sebastien was so much better than the rest of us? You've gotta hope not ...

Whatever, Champ Car is still gonna be pretty tough next year - there are some really quick young drivers in the series now. If Team Australia keeps up its momentum and its driver line-up, they're gonna be very strong, and obviously Robert Doornbos is a good racer and that Minardi team can be strong.

If you look at the '07 championship from second back to fifth, it was a hell of a battle, and as far as I'm aware those same guys are still gonna be there.

For next year, we're gonna make ourselves part of that mix. We just need to keep working our asses off and now we seem to be pointing in the right direction, I'm sure we can be fighting for the title.

I'm not just dicking around out there, coasting around for my pension: I'm trying to get us a championship.

PT

PS: Have a good Christmas.