Tracy, Gaughan are racing like champs

Monday, July 28, 2003 | 9:06 a.m.

It is beginning to look as if Las Vegas could be home to two national-championship auto racing trophies this winter.

Paul Tracy, a Canadian who resides in Summerlin, and Brendan Gaughan, a Las Vegas native, are making strong runs, Tracy for the CART Champ Car World Series championship and Gaughan for the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series championship.

Tracy won his second consecutive race Sunday, the CART Molson Indy Vancouver, for his fifth victory of the season and extended his lead in the Champ Car standings to 20 points over his closest pursuer, Bruno Junqueira.

Gaughan also made it two in a row with a victory Saturday in the NCTS race at Michigan International Speedway. It was Gaughan's fourth victory of the season and moved him into a tie for the series lead with Travis Kvapil.

For Tracy, the victory came after he was stripped Friday of the provisional pole -- and the accompanying championship point. Unfazed, Tracy came back on Saturday and regained the pole and then on Sunday backed up his win two weeks in Toronto.

"It's an unbelievable feeling," Tracy said. "To win two races in a row is very difficult anywhere. To do two races in a row in Canada, being a Canadian, driving for a Canadian team, the pressure is always very high. The media pressure is very high and the support from the fans is very high.

"That all adds up, compounds on itself. It's sometimes very difficult. You know, we were able to focus this weekend and replicate what we did in Toronto -- score maximum points."

Tracy, who never has won a CART championship, is in the midst of his most successful season in the series. His five wins matches his victory total from 1993, when he drove for team owner Roger Penske, but that season he finished third in the championship.

"You know, there's a long way to go in the championship," Tracy said. "All the races coming up, I feel I do well at. In particular, (Road America) and Australia. The only place where I haven't had much success is at Fontana, where we've had a lot of engine trouble, but we've been fast there.

"I'm looking forward to every race coming up on schedule; (they're all) good tracks for me. Usually in my career, I've usually started to come to life (in) the second half of the season."

Like Tracy, Gaughan is on a roll. Each of his Truck Series-leading four victories has come in the past seven races.

"This team is so good right now, it's scary," Gaughan said of his Las Vegas-based Orleans Racing team. "When you get a team together that has this much ability and this much talent ... you can't help but be successful."

Gaughan and Kvapil are tied with 2,000 points after 13 of 25 races, but Gaughan is confident that he has his bad races out of the way while Kvapil has yet to stumble. Gaughan has two DNFs this season while Kvapil has yet to drop out of a race.

"The 16 team (Kvapil) is doing what they need to do -- they're points racing," Gaughan said. "He still hasn't had a bad race -- the blow-up, the crash, whatever. When he has one of those, it's going to be real tough for him to make up positions racing like that.

"We've had our bad races; we've had the blown motor, we've had the crash and we were able to make up the points again so we're feeling pretty good."

Another Las Vegas native, Kurt Busch, nearly made it a sweep for local drivers but he fell one position shy of a victory in Sunday's NASCAR Winston Cup race at Pocono Raceway. Busch made a late charge on eventual race winner Ryan Newman, but couldn't run him down in the closing laps and settled for second place.

Busch is eighth in Winston Cup points and trails front-runner and Roush Racing teammate Matt Kenseth by 559 points with 16 races remaining. Sunday's second-place finish was his first top-10 showing since he won at Michigan International Speedway five races ago.

"(This finish) is surely a bump up and a boost of confidence and it gets the whole team motivated, especially after the way we've been running," Busch said.

"With our up-and-down flat tires, we had a blown motor, we had a shock go bad last week -- we're just trying to keep digging and get back in this points race. Kenseth is starting to pull away and it's just a matter of trying to gather what we can out of all our finishes coming up."

The Las Vegas-based Petersen Motorsports/White Lightning Racing team finished fifth in the GT class and 17th overall in Sunday's American Le Mans Series Grand Prix of Sonoma at Infineon Raceway. It was the team's first race since it won its class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.