New-look Tracy contending for CART title

Thursday, Aug. 5, 1999 | 10:16 a.m.

For the better part of the past 18 months, Paul Tracy has been known as the "bad boy" of the Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) series.

Despite winning 13 CART races in his previous eight seasons on the open-wheel circuit, the Las Vegas resident was labeled as an erratic driver who either won races or crashed -- although he didn't take a checkered flag all of last season.

His on-track incidents with several drivers earned him more time on probation than on the podium, and culminated with the 30-year-old being banished from this year's season-opening race for his past transgressions.

But 12 races into the 20-round CART FedEx Championship Series season -- well, 11 if you count the one-race suspension -- Tracy finds himself not only in the top 10 in the championship points race, but in contention for his first series championship.

Once considered one of the most inconsistent drivers in the series, Tracy has been a model of consistency in his past six starts.

Following a 19th-place finish at Gateway International Raceway outside St. Louis in May, Tracy has posted top-five finishes in five of his past six starts and vaulted from 13th to sixth in the points race.

Included in that run was his first win for Team Kool Green -- and his first since 1997, when he won three consecutive races while driving for Marlboro Team Penske.

Tracy maintains his success is not the result of his altering his driving style, it's merely a matter of him being more comfortable in his Reynard/Honda -- and a dash of good luck.

"I'm not doing anything differently than I have done my whole career, it's just now the car is doing what I want it to do and it goes where I want it to go," Tracy said. "I'm not fighting the car.

"We've had two pretty rotten years and this year, for some reason, we're not getting the unlucky breaks and bad things happening to us."

His streak of six consecutive points-paying races (only the top 12 finishers in each race earn points toward the season-long championship) is the longest active streak in the series going into Sunday's Tenneco Automotive Grand Prix of Detroit at The Raceway on Belle Isle.

"Everything is going good at Team KOOL Green right now," Tracy said. "All of the elements are there: great engines and tires from Honda and Firestone, (race engineer) Tony Cicale and the rest of the team have a good handle on the chassis setup, and I'm driving as good as I've ever driven.

"Now we need to take maximum advantage of the current situation and score another win."

Trailing series leader Juan Montoya by 39 points with eight races remaining, Tracy is well aware that he is going to have to win at least one other race and consistently finish among the leaders in each race to have a shot at the title.

Team owner Barry Green, for one, said he believes Tracy can pull it off.

"I'm definitely not counting Paul out," Green said. "We all know Paul Tracy: he could win two or three races in a row."

And Tracy said this weekend's race on the 2.346-mile temporary street circuit is as good a place as any to start such a streak. Tracy won the Grand Prix of Detroit in 1994.

"The Detroit circuit certainly offers a challenge, especially since we don't get to test there prior to the race," Tracy said. " But Team KOOL Green has shown we're the team to beat on the temporary circuits. We've been fast at all of them and finished one-two (with teammate Dario Franchitti) a couple of weeks ago on the streets of Toronto.

"Another finish like that would be just fine with me, although I'd like to be on the top step of the podium this time. I've won in the Motor City before and I'm aiming to do it again."