PT joins Autosport: Paul Position

[jonovision_man]

Should be a hoot... I wonder if he'll still do the Toronto Star articles?


Autosport.com is proud to announce that Former Champ Car champion Paul Tracy has joined the website with an exclusive column, Paul Position.

The Canadian star will keep autosport.com readers regularly up to date with his thoughts and progress in the 2006 season, as he bids to win his second title and attempts to make a switch to NASCAR racing.

Tracy's first installment of Paul Position will appear in tomorrow's edition of the Weekly Journal, where the Canadian will preview the upcoming Champ Car season, consider his title chances and rate his main rivals.

Tracy also offers his views on the state of open-wheel racing in North America and the mooted merger between the Champ Car World Series and the Indy Racing League.

jono

[datachicane]

mooted merger

:D

[jonovision_man]

I actually had to look that up. I'm not kidding.

I thought they meant "moot" as in a "moot point" (ie. irrelevant).

But apparantly in legal circles "moot" means "hypothetical or open to debate".

jono

[Accipiter]

"Paul Position?" That's when you have your nose up the backside of another car, right?

[oddlycalm]

The Canadian star will keep autosport.com readers regularly up to date with his thoughts PT has actual thoughts? :eek:

oc

[jonovision_man]

PT has actual thoughts? :eek:

oc

What the **** is that ***hole ****ing doing? He's going to get the ****ing chrome horn!

jono

[RusH]

What the **** is that ***hole ****ing doing? He's going to get the ****ing chrome horn!

jono

Stop dodging the language filter, or this forum will be private too. :gomer:


....I`m looking for the article, it says wednesday nights...must be next week.

[RusH]

http://www.autosport.com/journal/article.php/id/500

I think the growth of the Champ Car World Series is good. They've added some good events. Edmonton is a huge success, I think bringing Houston back (on a different course from before) is a real positive too. There's a big Hispanic element to the crowd, which always made it a great event in the past. So in terms of the growth and direction of the series, everything has gone in the right way.

Obviously the main struggling point of the series is the lack of sponsorship in North America - and to an extent, around the world - for open-wheel racing. Unless it's a NASCAR, companies aren't interested.

The landscape of the series is good, the direction of the series is good but there comes a point in time when Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe [Champ Car co-owners] have to wean some of the other team owners off putting their hands out for funding when sponsorship deals aren't in place at the start of the year. Teams have gotta make it on their own: that's business.

Back in the late '90s and early 21st century, there was more money around and the teams could go hire the best guy they could get. It's not like that any more, and it's the same in the Indy Racing League, and it's the same in Formula One. The back half of the grid has people who have had to bring money - a lot of money - to get a ride.

To run a car for a year in this series takes $4m or $5m (USD), and you can pay that just to drive a third F1 car on the Friday at a Grand Prix.

The answer for North American open-wheel racing is reunification, but I'm not putting a lot of hope into it yet. I've been through this war for ten years. Every year I've heard comments like 'we're working on reunification' or even 'it's going to happen'. It's the same every year: from January right up to the Indy 500 in May, a light bulb goes off in someone's head and they say 'Oh we need to get the two series together'.

Well Mario Andretti, Michael Andretti, Barry Green, Gerry Forsythe, Kevin Kalkhoven, Roger Penske... they've all tried it, and so far what's happened? So no, I don't get my hopes up and lay in bed at night hoping and wishing they'd get back together.

If it happens, then that's great: it would be great to have the best drivers from each series, mix in some of the races the IRL has with the great races we have in Champ Cars, and you'd have one truly great series. That would be fantastic. But I'm not gonna lose any sleep over it, because I don't have any control over it, don't even have any influence over it.


Newman/Haas are going to be the team to beat again. Bourdais is the champion, so of course he's the first person we've all got to beat, and he's looking strong as usual. And Bruno Junqueira has proven he's up to the challenge again too - he looked fit out of the car, and was going well in the car. He wants to remind everyone that the last time he raced in this series, he won.

AJ Allmendinger will be fast but still hasn't figured out how to get to the end of the race while he's leading, so it remains to be seen how he handles things whenever Justin is ahead of him this year. AJ didn't handle it well last year, and that's a hurdle he's gotta get over. He's got to try and learn from Justin and not treat it as the end of the world every time his teammate's a tenth of a second quicker.

It's hard to say whether anyone is going to be dominant in terms of victories this year. I mean, I didn't really expect Bourdais to win six races last season - but he did. The way the championship shook out last year, I felt I could have won six or seven races, and I only won two. We led way more laps than anyone else.

[jonovision_man]

I agree with him here to a point, but let's face it, we'd have what, 8? 10? cars on the grid this weekend:


The landscape of the series is good, the direction of the series is good but there comes a point in time when Kevin Kalkhoven and Gerry Forsythe [Champ Car co-owners] have to wean some of the other team owners off putting their hands out for funding when sponsorship deals aren't in place at the start of the year. Teams have gotta make it on their own: that's business.

Nice article, good insight into the series.

jono