For me, there's two ways of looking at the Monterrey race 10 days ago. The downer is that we weren't on the pace of Sebastien Bourdais or Justin Wilson, and when it mattered, we weren't on AJ Allmendinger's pace either. So it sounds like a bum weekend. The flip-side is that despite that, we did finish fourth and scored good solid points.
I know some long time autosport.com readers will think that last comment doesn't sound like the image they have of Paul Tracy, and I admit, back in my Penske days I was a little bit more win-or-bust. But I want the title, and to get that, I've got to maximise my results on days when me and my Forsythe Championship Racing crew don't have the car set-up right. Fifths, fourths and thirds become crucial in the final analysis, so whatever happens, I wanna finish every race in the top five.
Last year I was fourth in the championship, mainly because I had five DNFs from the 13 rounds. This year, if we can stay in the game on the bad days, and keep improving our car so that we have more good days, then we'll be title contenders, simple as that.
I'm figuring that sooner or later, Bourdais is going to have bad luck too. He hasn't been in that situation yet; he's been lucky with his reliability and had things go the way any driver would want them to go. But that's got to change at some point.