Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2003 | 10:20 a.m.
Brian Hilderbrand covers motor sports for the Las Vegas Sun. His motor sports notebook appears Friday. He can be reached at [email protected] or (702) 259-4089.
After winning 19 CART races but no championships in his first 12 seasons in the series, Paul Tracy was beginning to identify with Phil Mickelson.
After wrapping up his first championship last weekend in Australia and returning to his Las Vegas home, Tracy was feeling more like Frank Sinatra.
"I went out there and won the championship the way that I drive -- and that's racing to the maximum every weekend," Tracy said. "You could say I did it my way because I didn't go out there and race for points or cruise around to collect points; I went out and gave it everything I had every weekend and sometimes I won and sometimes I failed."
Tracy captured the CART Champ Car World Series championship despite finishing 13th Sunday in the race on the streets of Surfers Paradise. Bruno Junqueira, Tracy's closest pursuer in the title chase, crashed out 11 laps from the end and allowed Tracy, finally, to hoist the Vanderbilt Cup he had coveted for so long.
"You always dream of winning championships, but as the time went on and you keep trying and keep trying ... but there comes times in your career when you think, 'Man, I've won all these races but am I ever going to win a championship? How do I do it?'
"Finally, now it has come so I'm just relieved that it has come -- it has taken a long time but it's worth the wait."
Although he put on an air of cocky confidence throughout the season, Tracy admitted he felt an enormous amount of pressure to produce a championship this season in his first year with team owner Gerald Forsythe. Forsythe's longtime partner and sponsor, the Player's cigarette brand, was forced to end its eight-year run with the team on Oct. 1 due to strict Canadian tobacco advertising laws.
"(The championship) means a lot to me because when (Player's/Forsythe Racing) hired me, that was the objective," Tracy said. "When I joined the team, they basically said, 'Tell us what you want, whatever you need, because we need to win this championship and whatever you want or think you need, tell us and we'll get it for you.'
"Along with that, now they've given me all this freedom to do that, now I've got to deliver. There was a lot of pressure that went along with that and constant pressure throughout the year. We started off the season with three wins in a row and as the year went on, you build confidence but then you get toward the end of the year and the pressure just starts to build."
There also was the constant outside pressure from fans and critics alike who sometimes referred to Tracy as the best open-wheel driver to never have won a championship.
"I've won tons of races and led tons of laps and I'm in the top five in every category of everything that there is to do, but people would always say, 'Well, you haven't won a championship,' and that puts a lot of weight on you," he said. "It just feels like that has been taken off now."
That release was evident in Sunday's post-race celebration, when Tracy broke down in tears after being handed the silver Vanderbilt Cup.
"I told myself I wasn't going to lose it and then once I got my hands on that trophy, all my emotions came out of me," Tracy said. "It was basically a 13-year ride of emotions and everything that happened in that race was like a flashback of my whole career packed into two hours; starting off good and then bad, and then out of it and back in it, and then champion.
"It was a very emotional day for me and the whole team. They've been working hard for eight years to try to win another championship and it finally all came together."
But Tracy stopped short of calling Sunday the highlight of his racing career.
"There are a lot of highs," he said. "There are so many race wins and so many places that I have achieved great things, I can't really put my finger on one thing that is the pivotal moment but this is the end goal, the championship.
"Now I've achieved that and my motivation is still high, I feel I'm driving as well as I've ever driven and I'm motivated to continue driving. Right now, at 34, I'm in the prime of my career and I feel I can win more championships."
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