Columnist Brian Hilderbrand: Tracy fine-tunes approach in title quest

Friday, Jan. 19, 2001 | 9:40 a.m.

Brian Hilderbrand's motor sports notebook appears Friday. Reach him at bh@lasvegassun.com or 259-4089.

FONTANA, Calif. -- In his first three years with Team Kool Green, Paul Tracy has proved he can run up front and, when doing so, win races.

Now the 32-year-old Las Vegas resident wants to show that he can do it on a consistent basis.

"We know we've got the speed to win races, we know we have the car and the package ... really, we just haven't been consistent enough for the full duration of the season," said Tracy, who won three races in 2000. "We had some spurts where we were really quick and winning races, but the middle part of last season was a little slow for us.

"You have to be consistent throughout and that's what we're going to try to work on this year."

The only problem with that goal is that Tracy said he in unsure of how to go about achieving it.

"I don't know how you do that, it's just something that everybody is always trying to do," he said. "Ultimately, you want to win every race but that's not possible.

"I think we've just got to limit our mistakes as a team and limit my mistakes as a driver. So many things can go wrong -- just one bad pit stop can put you in a bad position. If we can limit our mistakes and capitalize on everything, that's what delivers a championship."

Had Tracy possessed that level of consistency last year, the Canadian native just might have won the 2000 CART championship. As it was, he entered the final race two races of the season second in points behind eventual champ Gil de Ferran.

Tracy was taken out of the penultimate race of the 2000 season by a crash, finished 17th and gained no points toward the championship. In the season finale at California Speedway, Tracy retired early with a mechanical failure, ending his hopes of his first CART title and settling for a fifth-place finish in points.

Although he lost his engineer, Tony Cicale, and several crew members during the off-season, Tracy refused to let the changes dampen his enthusiasm for the upcoming season.

"Times change," Tracy said. "It would have been nice to be able to hang onto the same guys because I'm tight with all my crew guys, but that's unrealistic. (Team owner Barry Green) has distributed the experience throughout the whole team.

"I'm very satisfied with my new group of guys; they're all young, motivated, and they want to carry on that double (pit stop) championship that they've won, so that's their motivation to prove themselves."

Among the changes at Team Kool Green this season is the addition of Team Motorola, and longtime Tracy nemesis Michael Andretti, to the team's Indianapolis stable, which already includes teammate Dario Franchitti. Although not true teammates, the three drivers will share technical information this season.

Tracy, who has 18 career CART victories, said the addition of Andretti will make Team Kool Green stronger.

"In the short term, (Andretti) is going to benefit from Dario and myself," Tracy said. "He's learning a new car, new engine, new team. But long term, over the course of the season, we're going to benefit from his experience; he's got a lot of knowledge working with great people and we're all going to benefit from it.

"If you look at things shortsightedly, he's going to benefit by working off of Dario and myself because we've got four years of experience with this team and this package and he's coming into it right now. But over the years, he's going to definitely contribute tremendously to the team."

Among the Winston Cup drivers who will be preparing for the March 4 UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at LVMS are seven-time Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt, three-time champion Jeff Gordon, Rusty Wallace, Mark Martin, Dale Earnhardt Jr., Dale Jarrett and Las Vegas native Kurt Busch.

The test will be open, free of charge, to the public.

Carpentier said he is confident this season will be different after Team Player's added noted engineer Tony Cicale (who was Paul Tracy's engineer last season at Team Kool Green).

"I've done four days of testing so far and this is the most enjoyable four days that I've had since I've been in CART," Carpentier said. "(Technical director) Bruce Ashmore and Tony Cicale are so brilliant and you get a lot of feedback when you talk to them.

"We just lacked a little bit of experience and with the coming of those guys, I really think we'll have a strong team this year. I think we're going to have good pit stops and I think we're going to be fighting for the lead very often. I'm really excited about it."

Carpentier, 29, had two podium finishes last season and finished 11th in the championship.

Mears, son of legendary off-road champion Roger Mears and nephew of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Rick Mears, is coming to Galles Racing after a successful career in the Dayton Indy Lights Series where he finished third in the 2000 championship.

Mears, from Bakersfield, Calif., also finished fourth in his CART debut last October at California Speedway.

Andre, a native of Lyon, France, raced for Pac West's Indy Lights program in 1998 and 1999, where he won twice at Laguna Seca and finished second in the 1998 Indy Lights championship.

Dixon's lap of 4.60 seconds at 290 mph was his best during testing and provided crew chief Dick LaHaie with enough data to make him feel confident enough to end testing.

"Last year we went into testing without a baseline tune up for the car, but this year has been different," said Dixon. "This year we came in with a baseline that we had already been running for a year, so we were able to focus on the performance of the car and getting it down the racetrack.

"We came here this year looking to improve on our engine combination and we succeeded in doing so. It was real nice to not have to make all those runs under so much pressure and to not feel like we needed to run the wheels off the car."

The NHRA Winston Drag Racing season opens Feb. 1-4 in Pomona, Calif.

Anyone camping at LVMS will receive the discount as well. ...

Former NASCAR Winston Cup champion Dale Jarrett will sign autographs at the Winston West event at The Bullring. Jarrett, who was the pole-sitter for the inaugural Winston Cup race at LVMS in 1998, will be on hand from 5-6 p.m. on Feb. 28 to sign autographs for fans.