Tracy hopes to add more races

The 2003 Champ Car champion returns with Jay Penske's team - formed out of the ashes of De Ferran Dragon Racing - in Long Beach this weekend, and will also contest the Texas, Toronto, Edmonton and Sears Point rounds.

Tracy had also secured an Indianapolis 500 seat with Dreyer & Reinbold before the Dragon deal came together, but said his focus now was on filling in the other calendar gaps with Dragon if possible.

"It's not optimal by any means," said Tracy of his Indy 500 team switch.

"Jay and I were working really, really hard on a full programme, and we were really, really close to having a sponsorship fall into place. It's gone on a bit of a hold. It's not completely out of the frame yet. But we just couldn't put it all together in the timeframe that we needed to.

"And frankly, the deal with Dennis [Reinbold] just kind of came along and fell right in my lap, just overnight. He says, 'hey, here is a deal for you; if you want to do it, let's do it. And if not, I'm going to sign somebody else.'

"So I didn't have anything concrete. I was hopeful that we could put together a full-season programme [with Dragon], but it was moving along a little bit slower than Jay and I wanted it to. We are not really in a position to force the sponsor's hand.

"So I really had to take that opportunity and just regroup and figure out what direction we were going to go for the rest of the season with Jay.

"Now we have these five races on the board. And we kind of closed out all of the bigger market races that we wanted to hit and the sponsors wanted to be at, and then now we try to focus in on all of the other races."

Tracy is confident that going straight into Long Beach without testing and having missed the opening rounds will not be an issue for him, especially as he is a four-time winner at the track.

"I don't think it's going to be any problem for us," he said.

"We have got Jay's group of guys, and he's got a core group of guys that have been in the Penske organisation a long time. They are guys that I have all worked with in the past and know we are not just hiring on a bunch of guys that nobody has worked with before. I've worked with all of the guys on the team at one stage of my career. I've known some of the guys on the team for 20 years.

"The engineer on the team, Eric Zeto, has been my race engineer when I was with Forsythe, we won the Long Beach race a couple of times together. I think he understands exactly what I need and I understand exactly how he works.

"So really it's just getting back on track and getting back in the groove of practice sessions and qualifying sessions."