Toronto: Tracy wins at home

It was a poignant win for the Forsythe team's chief sponsor Player's cigarettes, which confirmed earlier in the weekend that upcoming Canadian tobacco legislation will force it to withdraw from motorsports as of October 1. Tracy's win was the first in Champ Cars on Canadian soil for Player's since it began sponsoring cars in the series in 1994.

"This is the best win of my whole career - it's ten times batter than the last time I won here," Tracy remarked. "I have to thank everyone at Team Player's, especially Bob Bexon, who put this team together. The team gave me a perfect car today.

"The achievement was to try to win a race in Canada, and we'll be trying at Vancouver next," he added. "It's the last year for Player's, which is very sad for the team and everyone in Canada. So it's a great day for all of Canada for me to win here. I want everybody that's here to party tonight in the streets of Toronto."

The victory was extremely popular with the capacity crowd of 73,000 on hand and the result extended Tracy's CART championship lead to 15 points over Junqueira and 26 points over Jourdain heading into the second half of the season.

Tracy had his way from start to finish. He turned the fastest lap of the race on Lap 11 as he pulled out a 17s lead over Alex Tagliani during the first 31 lap stint. Tagliani dropped out at that point after clipping a wall, leaving Junqueira to lead the chase, but by the second round of stops on Lap 62, the Brazilian trailed the leader by nearly 22s.

Tracy had extended his margin to 32s when a full-course yellow on Lap 78 for a clash between Jimmy Vasser and Mario Dominguez tightened the field. After a handful of laps behind the Pace Car, Tracy again motored into the distance, with the pursuit now led by Jourdain, who got ahead of Junqueira during the third and final round of pit stops on Lap 81 when the Brazilian stopped too close to the pit wall.

Tracy almost missed Turn 3 a few laps later as he worked to extend his margin, but he recovered from the mistake and eased off to win by 4.53s over Jourdain. Junqueira was another four seconds back, while Sebastien Bourdais drove a mature race to take fourth place ahead of Oriol Servia and Roberto Moreno.

"I'm very happy," Jourdain said. "Today Paul was just unbelievable. He was very fast and he drove a perfect race. I'm really jealous and I hope I get this feeling by winning in Mexico City. We needed some points after a couple of bad results so it was a perfect finish. The crew did a fantastic last pit stop and we got Bruno. I tried to run as fast as possible, but Paul was too fast for everyone today."

Added Junqueira: "I should have been second but I think I didn't have the speed to beat Paul. Unfortunately at the last pit stop I made a mistake and lost a position to Michel. My only chance was the restart. I tried to get Michel but this track is really tricky to pass on. We've been consistent and are still second in the championship, but we need to reduce the gap."

The race was generally clean, marred by only two caution periods. The first occurred on the opening lap, when Jimmy Vasser and Adrian Fernandez tangled at the Turn 3 hairpin, dragging in four other cars. Everyone was able to continue, with Fernandez coming out best with a ninth place finish.

Patrick Carpentier took seventh place after battling oversteer all day long, while Darren Manning notched another points-scoring finish in eighth.