Tracy, Bourdais Lock Horns
Paul Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais engaged in a war of words after a controversial collision took both out of contention for Sunday's Monterrey Grand Prix
The incident occurred shortly after a restart on lap 48 of the 76-lap race, when Bourdais attempted a daring outbraking manoeuvre at the Turn 5 hairpin only for the pair to clash wheels coming out of the corner.
The impact broke Tracy's left-front suspension, and he could only limp into the pits to retire. Bourdais escaped with relatively minor damage, and after stopping at the Newman/Haas pit for a new right-rear tyre, he fought back to a fifth-place finish.
The two had diametrically opposing views of where the blame for the accident lay.
"We lost another race thanks to Tracy," said an irate Bourdais, alluding to previous territorial disputes at races like Road America and Laguna Seca last year.
"He was goofing around in pit-in and pit-out. He doesn't give you any room when you are trying to pass him and things like that, but that's usual PT (Paul Tracy).
"As much as I like him because he's a nice guy, he's not [nice] on the racetrack. It's got to stop; somehow, it's got to stop.
"When I tried to pass him he didn't give me any room at all. Three-quarters of my car was beside him; my front wheel was just behind his front wheel. I wasn't asking for the whole racetrack. I was waiting for him to give me some room but he didn't give me any. We were at the apex and he kept turning and there was nowhere to go."
Tracy, not surprisingly, begged to differ.
"I gave the guy plenty of room - I couldn't have given him any more room," he maintained. "It was pretty unrealistic. He came in, locked up, I moved out of the way for him and then he just drove over my front wheel at the exit of the corner.
"It was after the apex when he hit me. It was way after the corner. I was on the grass and he kept pushing over.
"You know, we're out of the race, he gets a flat tyre and we probably would have finished 1-2, so it's a stupid move on his part."
Tracy also said that if the roles had been reversed he would have been penalised by the officials. The 2003 series Champion has long complained of officiating inconsistency and indeed bias against him because of his 'Bad Boy' image.
"If I had done the same thing to [Bourdais] he'd be freaking out, and I would have been called in for a stop-and-go penalty," said Tracy.
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